Zealand Pharma and Generate Biomedicines Enter Collaboration and License Agreement to Develop Protein Therapeutics Engineered with AI for Metabolic Diseases
Key Highlights
- ➤Generate Biomedicines receives USD 30 million up-front for two initial programs
- ➤Generate eligible for nearly USD 1.2 billion in total milestones
- ➤Generate may receive up to USD 35 million in early preclinical milestones
- ➤Zealand Pharma assumes clinical development, regulatory submissions, and worldwide commercialization
- ➤Collaboration targets multispecific protein therapeutics for obesity and metabolic diseases
Expert Statements
Utpal Singh, Chief Scientific Officer at Zealand Pharma
“We are thrilled to collaborate with Generate, a leader in AI and structure-enabled drug generation. This collaboration expands our toolbox to include proteins, complementing our existing small-molecule and peptide capabilities and opening new approaches for polypharmacology for innovative therapeutics”
Utpal Singh, Chief Scientific Officer at Zealand Pharma
“This collaboration reflects our strategy of expanding our platform and integrating our metabolic expertise in Copenhagen with the multi-modality expertise in Cambridge to develop next-generation therapeutics for metabolic health.”
Mike Nally, Chief executive officer of Generate
“We are excited to bring together Zealand Pharma’s deep expertise in peptide therapeutics and metabolic disease with Generate’s cutting-edge computational platform and experimental capabilities to address the continued unmet medical need for patients with cardiometabolic disease”
Mike Nally, Chief executive officer of Generate
“Together, our teams will first define what a great medicine for patients looks like for each of the two initial programs, and then leverage The Generate Platform to design multispecific candidates that meet or exceed that profile.”
Zealand Pharma and Generate Biomedicines Enter Collaboration and License Agreement to Develop Protein Therapeutics Engineered with AI for Metabolic Diseases * Collaboration will combine Zealand Pharma’s expertise in metabolic health with Generate’s proprietary generative AI platform to create multispecific drug candidates with tailored biological functions * Generate will receive USD 30 million up-front, up to USD 35 million in early preclinical milestones, and a total of nearly USD 1.2 billion in milestones, plus tiered royalties for two initial programs, with an option to add a third * The agreement will broaden Zealand Pharma’s modality capabilities beyond peptides while extending The Generate Platform into obesity and other metabolic diseases Copenhagen, Denmark, October 13, 2026 – Zealand Pharma A/S (Nasdaq: ZEAL) (CVR-no. 20045078), a biotechnology company transforming the future of metabolic health, today announced a multi-target strategic collaboration with Generate Biomedicines Inc. (“Generate”) (NASDAQ: GENB). Under the collaboration, the companies intend to design and develop multispecific protein therapeutics for obesity and other metabolic diseases using The Generate Platform, which integrates generative AI with high-throughput experimental validation.
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