The London-based biotech firm will focus on the identification and validation of novel therapeutic targets for fibrotic diseases and osteoarthritis. 

London-based biotech firm Relation has signed two strategic collaborations with British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company GSK worth $45 million (£35.3 million). 

The collaborations will focus on the identification and validation of novel therapeutic targets for fibrotic diseases and osteoarthritis.

“These diseases have few treatments that address their root causes,” said Relation chief executive David Roblin. “By combining Relation’s patient-centric discovery platform with GSK’s global scale and expertise, we have the potential to accelerate the development of transformative medicines for patients who have long awaited new therapies.”

Under the terms of the agreements, Relation will receive an upfront payment from GSK of $45 million which comprises an equity investment of $15 million. 

In addition, Relation could receive success-based collaboration payments of up to $63 million, as well as potential preclinical, development, commercial, and sales milestone payments averaging $200 million per target across both deals, along with tiered royalties on net sales of products.

This is the largest deal for a British seed-stage biotech company.

In March this year, the firm announced $35 million in new seed financing led by DCVC and co-lead NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture arm, bringing its total seed fundraise to $60 million. 

Relation will lead observational studies to generate two unique functional disease data sets and Relation’s platform will analyse this data by integrating human genetics, single-cell multi-omics directly from human tissue, functional assays, and machine learning to discover novel disease targets. 

This approach minimises the risk of clinical failure by ensuring targets are robustly validated before entering the clinic. Relation will apply its platform to a number of related fibrotic conditions and also osteoarthritis. 

GSK will have worldwide development and commercialisation rights to any resulting targets.