• 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

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.

The collaboration is intended to accelerate the design and development of protein therapeutics for obesity and metabolic disease by combining Zealand Pharma’s expertise in metabolic health with Generate’s ability to engineer proteins with AI and refine those designs using experimental data toward the desired biological function.

“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,” said 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.”

“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,” said 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.”