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Takeda and Nabla Bio Expand AI Protein-Design Deal With Potential Payouts Above $1 Billion

The deal reflects Takeda's pivot toward scalable AI-enabled discovery after exiting cell therapy.

Overview

  • Nabla will receive double-digit millions upfront plus research funding, with success-based payments that could exceed $1 billion.
  • The multi-year collaboration applies the Joint Atomic Model across Takeda’s early pipeline to generate de novo antibodies, multispecifics, and other custom biologics for hard-to-treat diseases.
  • Nabla characterizes JAM as a generative system that autocompletes molecular designs and reports a three-to-four-week design-to-test cycle.
  • The company points to a 2025 bioRxiv preprint on GPCR-targeting antibodies and reports preclinical properties, including low immunogenicity, in non-human primates.
  • Nabla projects first-in-human readouts within one to two years, while Takeda has joined a shared-data AI consortium and stepped away from cell therapy research.