A Stan­ford biotech rubbed el­bows with Genen­tech in 2020, reach­ing a deal with the big-name biotech just over 18 months ago. And now, the AI out­fit is in its sec­ond part­ner­ship with Big Phar­ma.

Gen­e­sis Ther­a­peu­tics se­cured a deal with big phar­ma Eli Lil­ly, the com­pa­ny an­nounced on Tues­day — to dis­cov­er ther­a­pies “across a range of ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas,” ac­cord­ing to a state­ment put out by the biotech.

Found­ed in 2019 as a spin­out out of Vi­jay Pande’s lab at Stan­ford, Gen­e­sis Ther­a­peu­tics looked to join the in­dus­try-wide push at the time to in­cor­po­rate AI in­to drug R&D. The biotech ini­tial­ly bagged $4.1 mil­lion in seed fund­ing, led by An­dreessen Horowitz. And in the mean­time, it’s got a big name be­hind it as di­rec­tor of the board: for­mer Alex­ion CEO and founder Leonard Bell.

It fur­ther spread its wings af­ter the biotech inked a deal with Genen­tech in 2020 — Roche’s glob­al head of phar­ma part­ner­ing James Sabry said at the time that “AI can help un­lock the next gen­er­a­tion of in­no­v­a­tive ther­a­pies for pa­tients in need of ad­di­tion­al op­tions. We are ex­cit­ed to work with Gen­e­sis’ team to dis­cov­er med­i­cines cur­rent­ly out of reach us­ing con­ven­tion­al meth­ods.” Two months lat­er, it scored $52 mil­lion via a Se­ries A round.

Now on­to the de­tails: the biotech will be us­ing their AI-based drug dis­cov­ery plat­form, which in­cludes ar­ti­fi­cial neur­al net­works and ma­chine learn­ing mod­els to iso­late and pin­point drug can­di­dates for a va­ri­ety of se­vere dis­eases — which so far re­main un­named. Gen­e­sis is able to make “ul­tra-fast and ac­cu­rate pre­dic­tions” of a com­pound’s po­ten­cy, se­lec­tiv­i­ty, tox­i­c­i­ty and more, CEO Evan Fein­berg told End­points News two years ago on the heels of the Genen­tech deal be­ing an­nounced. As far as fi­nan­cials go, Gen­e­sis will get $20 mil­lion up­front for work on three ini­tial tar­gets. Lil­ly will re­tain the op­tion to add two more tar­gets to Gen­e­sis’s plate, and Gen­e­sis is el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive up to $670 mil­lion over­all in com­bined up­front + mile­stone pay­ments, plus po­ten­tial roy­al­ties.

“We are ex­cit­ed to join forces with Lil­ly and their world-class re­search and de­vel­op­ment teams to dis­cov­er nov­el drugs for pa­tients suf­fer­ing with se­vere dis­eases,” Fein­berg said in a state­ment.

Amgen is the latest pharma company to appear on the radar of Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is investigating the way pharma companies are using subsidiaries in low- or zero-tax countries to lower their tax bills.

Like its peers Merck, AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, Wyden notes how Amgen uses its Puerto Rico operations to consistently pay tax rates that are substantially lower than the U.S. corporate tax rate of 21%, with an effective tax rate of 10.7% in 2020 and 12.1% in 2021.

After controversially spinning out its talc liabilities and filing for bankruptcy in an attempt to settle 38,000 lawsuits, Johnson & Johnson is now changing up the formula for its baby powder products.

J&J is beginning the transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder portfolio, the pharma giant announced on Thursday — just months after a federal judge ruled in favor of its “Texas two-step” bankruptcy to settle allegations that its talc products contained asbestos and caused cancer. An appeals court has since agreed to revisit that case.