Revolution Medicines and Iambic Therapeutics Forge $25M AI-Driven Drug Discovery Alliance

Revolution Medicines has entered into a strategic collaboration with Iambic Therapeutics, leveraging artificial intelligence to accelerate oncology drug discovery. The multi-year technology and research partnership, announced on July 9, 2025, could see Iambic earn up to $25 million through upfront payments, near-term performance-based milestones, and ongoing R&D reimbursements.

AI-Powered Platforms Take Center Stage in Oncology Research

At the heart of this collaboration is Iambic's suite of AI-driven drug discovery platforms. The San Diego-based company will train custom versions of its NeuralPLexer protein-ligand structure prediction model using Revolution's proprietary molecular libraries and structures. This tailored approach aims to enable drug discovery across novel targets, particularly those that have proven challenging to address through conventional methods.

Revolution will also gain access to Iambic's PropANE model, a pre-trained graph neural network designed to evaluate dozens of drug properties for lead selection and optimization. Both companies will have the ability to leverage these models, with each retaining rights to a limited number of exclusive targets.

Targeting RAS-Addicted Cancers

Revolution Medicines, known for its focus on RAS-addicted cancers, brings to the table a wealth of proprietary data and a pipeline of RAS inhibitors designed to suppress variants of RAS proteins. The company's CEO, Mark Goldsmith, M.D., Ph.D., expressed optimism about the collaboration, stating, "The capabilities of Iambic's AI-driven discovery platform, partnered with our unique collection of proprietary data, present an opportunity to rapidly explore oncology targets known to be challenging to address through conventional drug discovery approaches."

This partnership comes on the heels of Revolution's recent $2 billion funding agreement with Royalty Pharma, secured last month to support the development of its lead cancer candidate, daraxonrasib. The drug has recently entered a second phase 3 trial in non-small cell lung cancer, with an ongoing late-stage study in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

The Intersection of AI and Physics in Drug Discovery

Iambic's discovery platforms stand out for their integration of AI with fundamental physics principles. This approach allows molecular models to explore a wide range of possible chemical structures, potentially uncovering novel therapeutic candidates that traditional methods might overlook.

As the pharmaceutical industry continues to embrace AI-driven technologies, collaborations like this between Revolution Medicines and Iambic Therapeutics underscore the growing importance of machine learning in accelerating drug discovery and addressing complex therapeutic challenges in oncology and beyond.