Israel-based computational chemistry company Evogene Ltd. (Nasdaq: EVGN) and the Blavatnik Center for Drug Discovery (BCDD) at Tel Aviv University have announced a joint initiative to accelerate small-molecule drug discovery for programs originating from Israel’s academic research ecosystem. The collaboration, facilitated by Ramot, Tel Aviv University‘s technology transfer company, pairs Evogene’s proprietary generative AI platform, ChemPass AI, with BCDD’s experimental infrastructure and translational development capabilities. No financial terms were disclosed.
The initiative operates through an integrated Design-Make-Test-Analyze workflow. Evogene contributes ChemPass AI’s generative design and computational chemistry capabilities to produce and optimize novel small molecules, while BCDD provides experimental validation, biological screening, and translational support. Evogene and BCDD will jointly evaluate emerging programs from Israeli academic institutions and entrepreneurial ventures, selecting projects for coordinated development support. The announcement specifically cited molecular glues and complex proteins as target classes of interest.
The BCDD deal is the latest in a sequence of academic and biotech collaborations through which Evogene has deployed ChemPass AI as an external discovery engine. In August 2025, Evogene entered a collaboration with Professor Ehud Gazit at Tel Aviv University — also facilitated by Ramot — to apply ChemPass AI to small-molecule inhibitors of pathological metabolite self-assembly in diseases including Tyrosinemia and Gout. That deal shares the same institutional partner, the same technology transfer facilitator, and the same computational-experimental structure as the current BCDD initiative, making it a direct predecessor. Evogene has also applied ChemPass AI in collaborations with Unravel Biosciences for demyelinating disorders, Queensland University of Technology for chemotherapy-resistant lung cancer, and Systasy Bioscience and LMU University Hospital Munich for neutrophil-driven inflammatory disease. On the infrastructure side, Evogene announced an expanded collaboration with Google Cloud in February 2026 to integrate autonomous AI agents into ChemPass AI, and reported in June 2026 the successful completion of a milestone integrating agentic computational systems capable of early-stage target product profile definition.
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