Weekly Rundown: Anthropic and Lilly's deals prove AI is becoming biopharma's biggest infrastructure bet Marriage linked to lower cancer risk, pharma deals, and more led the news this week.

https://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/weekly-rundown-anthropic-and-lilly-s-deals-prove-ai-is-becoming-biopharma-s-biggest-infrastructure-bet-17118 Two deals struck within days of each other this week made one thing clear: pharma is done experimenting with AI and has moved on to buying it. Anthropic acquired Coefficient Bio, a New York-based stealth biotech founded just eight months ago, for approximately $400 million in stock — a number that turns heads until you look at who built it. Co-founders Nathan Frey and Samuel Stanton both came out of Prescient Design, Genentech's internal computational drug discovery unit, and CEO Aris Theologis brings stints at Evozyne and Paragon Biosciences. The team will fold into Anthropic's healthcare and life sciences division under Eric Kauderer-Abrams, serving a pharma client base that already includes Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, AbbVie, and Genmab. Across town, Insilico Medicine locked in a global research and development deal with Eli Lilly worth up to $2.75 billion in milestones, handing Lilly an exclusive worldwide license to a portfolio of preclinical oral drug candidates spanning multiple disease areas, with $115 million due upfront. The message from both deals is the same: access to the right algorithms — and the people behind them — has become as strategically important to drug developers as the molecules they are chasing. — Andrea Corona