San Diego-based Aizen Therapeutics has entered a multi-program collaboration with an undisclosed San Diego-based public biotech to apply its DaX artificial intelligence platform to the design of oral peptide therapeutics across immunology and neurology targets. The agreement provides Aizen with several million dollars in initial revenue and up to USD 100 million in milestone payments per nominated target.
The DaX platform, spun out of Caltech and developed by scientific founder David Van Valen, is a generative AI foundation model trained on millions of annotated molecules and receptors. It generates de novo peptides incorporating non-canonical amino acids (ncAAs), which the company said allows it to explore peptide chemical space at ten times the scale of conventional ncAA discovery methods. The use of ncAAs confers metabolic stability and membrane permeability properties that conventional peptide sequences lack, supporting oral bioavailability. Unlike a conventional asset licensing agreement, the collaboration is centered on Aizen's computational design platform rather than existing drug candidates, with DaX applied against biological targets nominated by the partner.
No specific drug programs, target identities, or clinical candidates have been disclosed. Assets are at a pre-nomination or early discovery stage. The partner company's identity was not revealed, beyond its description as a publicly traded San Diego biotech active in immunology and neurology.
Under the deal structure, Aizen receives an upfront payment described as several million dollars, with up to USD 100 million in milestones available for each target that advances through the collaboration. The multi-program structure implies the total potential value scales with the number of targets nominated. No royalty terms, territorial rights, or development responsibility provisions were disclosed beyond Aizen's role in applying the DaX platform.
The transaction is Aizen's first disclosed commercial partnership since the company emerged from stealth in November 2024 with USD 13 million in venture financing from Wilson Hill, Madrona, and Cercano. At that time, Aizen described DaX as a D-amino acid explorer platform — a computational tool for designing mirror peptides composed entirely of D-amino acids, which confer enhanced stability and reduced immunogenicity. The current announcement describes the platform in broader terms as a tool for oral peptide design using ncAAs more generally, reflecting either an evolution in how Aizen positions the technology or an expansion of its disclosed application scope.