One day af­ter tak­ing a shot on an an­ti-TIG­IT bis­pe­cif­ic from Agenus, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb is still in a deal­mak­ing mood.

For Wednes­day’s chas­er, Bris­tol My­ers is re­turn­ing to a com­pa­ny that had teamed up with Cel­gene be­fore its ac­qui­si­tion in 2019. That biotech is Ex­sci­en­tia, and they’ve scored an ex­pand­ed deal with Bris­tol My­ers to fur­ther build on its ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ties less than a month af­ter a mas­sive Se­ries D fi­nanc­ing.

The up­dat­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion calls for “up to” a $50 mil­lion up­front pay­ment to the Ox­ford, UK-based biotech, along with $125 mil­lion in “near to mid-term” mile­stones, the com­pa­nies said in a re­lease. Oth­er mile­stones for reg­u­la­to­ry and com­mer­cial as­pects can bring the to­tal val­ue of the deal past $1.2 bil­lion.

Much like the orig­i­nal deal, the ex­pan­sion will cov­er three new projects, Ex­sci­en­tia CEO An­drew Hop­kins told End­points News. The part­ner­ship al­so al­lows the pair an op­tion to go in­to even fur­ther projects, he added. In­di­ca­tions will cov­er pri­mar­i­ly on­col­o­gy and im­munol­o­gy but can cov­er any dis­ease with­in those um­brel­las.

Over the last few years, AI deals have be­gun grab­bing a big­ger foothold through­out the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try. Sev­er­al biotechs have al­so popped up promis­ing to speed up the drug de­vel­op­ment process through ma­chine learn­ing and oth­er AI-fo­cused mod­els, in­clud­ing play­ers like in­sil­i­co, De­n­ovio and Gen­e­sis.

Bris­tol My­ers has made these types of AI plays be­fore, sign­ing on to work with Con­cer­to HealthAI in March 2019 to do just that. They al­so part­nered with ma­chine-learn­ing start­up In­sitro in Oc­to­ber 2020 to po­ten­tial­ly find new ways to cre­ate drugs for ALS.

And As­traZeneca an­nounced in Feb­ru­ary it added the first tar­get gen­er­at­ed by AI to its port­fo­lio, com­ing out of a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Lon­don-based com­pa­ny, Benev­o­len­tAI. That deal fo­cused on iden­ti­fy­ing and val­i­dat­ing a new way to at­tack chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease.

Ex­sci­en­tia is no stranger to wheel­ing and deal­ing, hav­ing scored sev­er­al ma­jor col­lab­o­ra­tions be­fore its first ma­jor fi­nanc­ing round about a year ago. The biotech net­ted part­ner­ships with a host of Big Phar­mas in­clud­ing Bay­er, Roche, Sanofi and Glax­o­SmithK­line, not lim­it­ing their plat­form to one area: The deals ranged from car­di­ol­o­gy and on­col­o­gy to psy­chi­atric and meta­bol­ic dis­eases.

Those deals al­so fol­lowed a team-up with Sum­it­o­mo Dainip­pon Phar­ma for an ex­per­i­men­tal pill in ob­ses­sive com­pul­sive dis­or­der, which the pair claim was the first AI-de­vel­oped drug to en­ter the clin­ic when it be­gan Phase I in ear­ly 2020.

But back in May 2020, Ex­sci­en­tia be­gan hit­ting the gas in rais­ing cap­i­tal, net­ting a $60 mil­lion Se­ries C to more than dou­ble their pre­vi­ous round from 2018. The Se­ries C was ul­ti­mate­ly ex­pand­ed this past March when Black­Rock pushed its to­tal to $100 mil­lion, and Ex­sci­en­tia quick­ly raised an­oth­er $525 mil­lion in late April — a raise that in­clud­ed a $252 Se­ries D round, plus a $300 mil­lion eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment by Soft­Bank.

“Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly we see our goal is to solve drug de­sign and to then use that tech to then scale how we de­liv­er high-qual­i­ty, pre­ci­sion-en­gi­neered drugs in­to the clin­ic,” Hop­kins told End­points. “The more projects we run, the more our sys­tem learns and the bet­ter it gets. There is a di­rect cor­re­la­tion of learn­ing by do­ing.”

The biotech has al­so con­tin­ued to tout what it says are the first-ever ex­per­i­men­tal drugs to hit the clin­ic. In the vein of its OCD pill, Ex­sci­en­tia said in April that its AI-de­signed mol­e­cule for im­muno-on­col­o­gy is the first such com­pound to reach in-hu­man test­ing in that area as well.

This ar­ti­cle has been up­dat­ed to in­clude com­ment from Ex­sci­en­tia CEO An­drew Hop­kins.

The FDA on Tuesday released a warning letter sent earlier this month to the Mason, OH-based site of Procter & Gamble Manufactura, raising questions about the list of ingredients on the label and in the electronic filing.

The warning says that for P&G’s over-the-counter Vicks Nyquil Severe Hot Remedy Cold and Flu Plus Congestion, there’s a “mismatched” list of active ingredients between the labeling and the electronic listing file. The listing file for the active ingredients did not match the active ingredients in the electronic file.

The Federal Trade Commission has gotten involved in a patent feud over Supernus’ Parkinson’s drug Apokyn, a case the agency said may have ‘‘significant implications” for patients who rely on the drug.

Sage Chemical won the first generic approval for its Apokyn formulation (also known as apomorphine hydrochloride injection) back in 2022. The non-ergoline dopamine agonist is approved to treat Parkinson’s symptoms during “off episodes,” such as difficulty moving, tremors and intense cramping. However, regulators specified that the approval pertained to the generic drug cartridges only, not the injector pen required for administration.