XTALPi and DoveTree LLC Forge Strategic Partnership to Build World's Leading AI-Powered Drug Discovery Platform

Intelligent Finance APP learned on June 23 that XtalPi (02228), a quantum physics, AI, and robotics platform for drug and new material R&D, announced a multi-billion-dollar strategic cooperation with DoveTree LLC, founded by Gregory Verdine, a leading figure in American chemical biology. The agreement stipulates that DoveTree will obtain global exclusive rights to multiple pipelines in the fields of oncology, autoimmune diseases, and neurological disorders. XtalPi will receive a total of US$100 million as an upfront payment (US$51 million + US$49 million) within 10 days and 180 days after signing, and is eligible to receive billions in milestone payments and single-digit royalties.

A Deep Dive into Gregory Verdine: A Pioneer in Chemical Biology, Legendary Serial Entrepreneur, and Seasoned Venture Capitalist, Verdine is a Visionary Who Has Mastered the Art of Commercializing Academic Achievements. He is Also an Entrepreneur Who Owns Multiple Publicly-Traded Companies and Has Long Achieved Financial Freedom. This Mutual Collaboration with XtalPi Once Again Places This Rainmaker of Drug Discovery Under the Spotlight.

35-Year-Old Harvard Tenured Professor: Rewriting the Ceiling of Academia

Verdine's academic legend remains an Ivy League benchmark: receiving a full professorship at Harvard at 29, and a tenured professorship in the Chemistry Department at 35. At the time, among the 21 faculty members in Harvard's Chemistry Department where he worked, five were Nobel Prize winners, and no new tenured professors had been added for 50 years. Verdine's promotion filled this gap, making him the first tenured professor in the department after "the father of organic synthesis" and 1965 Nobel laureate Robert B. Woodward, as well as the youngest in half a century.

Verdine has also pioneered a new paradigm in therapies for epigenetic regulation and DNA repair. Using the revolutionary "Stapled Peptides" technology, he has opened up an entirely new path for targeting "undruggable targets" within cells. This technology, which *Science* has called a "paradigm shift in pharmaceuticals," has unlocked a golden track worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the realm of undruggable targets ("Undruggable Target").

Biotech Alchemy: 12 Startups Forge a Matrix of Over 10 Billion in Market Value

In the biotech circle, where venture capital often piles in but repeatedly fails, Verdine's entrepreneurial record is nothing short of remarkable: as a successful serial entrepreneur and business leader, he has founded over 12 biotech companies, with one being acquired, seven going public, and the remaining companies focusing on developing unprecedented disruptive drugs, making significant contributions especially in the field of cancer treatment.

Among them is Enanta Pharmaceuticals (ENTA.US), the holder of the core patent for the hepatitis C drug Paritaprevir, which helped AbbVie's Viekira Pak® achieve an impressive $1.6 billion in sales in its first year on the market. Aileron Therapeutics (ALRN, later renamed Rein Therapeutics, RNTX.US), the first publicly listed company specializing in stapled peptide technology, once collaborated with Pfizer to advance a combination therapy for breast cancer into clinical trials. WaVe Life Sciences (WVE.US) focuses on RNA therapies and reached a peak market value of $2.5 billion. Warp Drive Bio, founded by him, was acquired by Revolution Medicine (RVMD.US) due to its unique RAS-targeted development platform. Leveraging this technology, Revolution Medicine developed an entire pipeline of RAS-targeted therapies, among which RMC-6236 delivered stunning clinical data, propelling the company’s market value to $7.5 billion. FogPharma, established in 2015, is a global leader in α-helical peptides. Through its Helicon™ peptide therapy, it can target nearly all "undruggable" targets, successfully overcoming the β-Catenin target. The company has raised over $500 million in cumulative financing and is highly sought after by top biopharmaceutical investors.

In the nine-life-and-death battlefields of Biotech companies, Verdine's successive entrepreneurial success rate is nothing short of a game-changer.

Blockbuster Drug Cash Machine: 3 Marketed Drugs Generate Over 30 Billion in Sales, Golden Finger of Target Selection

Verdine is not only a capital powerhouse but also a hardcore R&D mastermind, boasting a drug-to-market conversion rate that crushes the industry. It continuously pioneers entirely new therapeutic frontiers, carving out a billion-dollar market in the realm of ultra-challenging drug targets where most pharmaceutical companies either hesitate to tread or return empty-handed.

In the pharmaceutical industry, research targeting traditionally "undruggable" targets is considered a "Holy Grail"-level challenge, attracting continuous attention and investment. What is less known is that Verdine was the originator of the industry-defining concept of "drugging the undruggable." More crucially, the therapies he led to develop were the first in the world to successfully target two of the three core "undruggable" targets—RAS and β-Catenin—directly giving rise to a series of blockbuster drugs that achieved massive commercial success. To this day, Verdine and his team remain at the forefront of research, continuously advancing technological progress in this field.

The first-generation T-cell lymphoma drug Romidepsin (Istodax®), led by Verdine, is an HDAC inhibitor with annual sales of 75 million US dollars. Later, it was sold by Celgene to BMS, with cumulative sales reaching hundreds of millions of US dollars. Paritaprevir and Glecaprevir serve as the core engines of AbbVie’s all-oral hepatitis C cocktails Viekira Pak® and Mavyret®, respectively. The former received FDA approval in late 2014, and by 2015, global sales of this product exceeded 1.6 billion US dollars, with cumulative sales surpassing 10 billion US dollars. AbbVie’s Mavyret, approved by the FDA in August 2017, is the third globally available drug that covers hepatitis C virus genotypes 1-6. As a latecomer that rose to prominence, its sales reached 3.438 billion US dollars in 2018, ranking third on the list of global antiviral drug sales, with cumulative sales amounting to tens of billions of US dollars. It stands as the final champion of the Hepatitis C DAAs era.

As a "golden finger" in target selection, Verdine has served as a consultant for Roche, Merck, and Pfizer for 20 consecutive years. Verdine's affiliated enterprises have over 10 clinical pipelines under research, focusing on areas such as cancer and rare diseases, drawing significant attention from both the capital market and the pharmaceutical industry.

Full Ecosystem Layout: Joining Hands with Top Venture Capital Veterans to Build the Strongest AI Pharmaceutical Platform

Verdine is also an investment partner at top venture capital firm a16z, focusing on the Bio+Health track. He has previously served as an investment partner at Third Rock Ventures and Apple Tree Partners, and was a special advisor to Texas Pacific Group, one of the largest private equity firms in the United States.

Notably, a16z is a top-tier VC in Silicon Valley, with a total management scale of $16.5 billion. Its investment portfolio includes tech giants such as Airbnb, Facebook, Slack, and Lyft. It is also a veritable investment powerhouse in the AI pharmaceuticals field. In an interview, its partner Vijay Pande stated that the AI revolution is occurring almost simultaneously with the biological revolution, and the integration of AI with biotechnology and healthcare is revolutionizing drug design, medical services, and clinical trials.

Analysts believe that the essence of this collaboration between Verdine and XtalPi is to combine Verdine's proven target selection capabilities with the AI screening and low-cost R&D ecosystem of Chinese enterprises—this "US IP + Chinese efficiency" model validates the much-discussed NewCo model in recent years, which represents the optimal solution for flexible biotech R&D and product globalization. In this approach, star experts select target combinations, AI platforms handle industrialized R&D, and value is ultimately realized through licensing or acquisitions. For capital betting on innovative paradigms, the value of the Verdine-XtalPi partnership lies not only in a few drugs but also in unlocking a trillion-dollar market of undruggable targets, with the potential to transform this project into a replicable pipeline incubation matrix.

According to the letter of intent, XtalPi will receive upfront payments of US$51 million and US$49 million within 10 days and 180 days after the signing of the final agreement, respectively. It is also eligible to receive potential development and sales milestone payments amounting to billions of US dollars, as well as royalties in the low single-digit percentage based on the products' annual net sales. These financial benefits will bring significant returns to the company and support its ongoing R&D and innovation activities.

Moreover, Professor Gregory Verdine, a pioneer in the field of chemical biology and a successful serial entrepreneur, has further elevated XtalPi's standing and influence in the industry through his participation and investment. This collaboration not only demonstrates XtalPi's technical capabilities and market potential but may also inspire more high-tech cooperation projects of a similar nature.