Recursion Pharmaceuticals Advances Three AI-Discovered Drug Candidates Into Phase 2 Trials

Recursion Pharmaceuticals, the Salt Lake City-based AI drug discovery company, has announced that three drug candidates identified through its machine learning platform have advanced into Phase 2 clinical trials. The milestone makes Recursion one of the first AI-native pharmaceutical companies to reach mid-stage clinical testing with multiple compounds discovered entirely through computational methods.^[1]

The three candidates target distinct therapeutic areas: a rare neurological disorder caused by a lysosomal storage enzyme deficiency, a fibrotic lung disease, and a solid tumor indication in oncology. All three were identified through Recursion's phenomics platform, which uses high-throughput imaging of cellular responses to genetic and chemical perturbations to map the biological relationships between genes, diseases, and potential drug candidates.^[2]

The Recursion Platform

Recursion's approach to drug discovery differs fundamentally from traditional pharmaceutical research. Rather than starting with a hypothesis about a disease mechanism and designing molecules to address it, Recursion generates massive datasets of cellular images — more than 50 petabytes to date — and uses machine learning to identify patterns that predict which compounds will have therapeutic effects in which disease contexts. The company's robotic laboratory infrastructure can run more than two million experiments per week, generating data at a scale that would be impossible with conventional laboratory methods.^[2]

Partnership with Bayer and Roche

Recursion has established major pharmaceutical partnerships to validate and commercialize its pipeline. A 2023 partnership with Bayer provided $50 million upfront and up to $1 billion in milestone payments for joint drug discovery programs in oncology and cardiovascular disease. A separate collaboration with Roche and Genentech, announced in 2022, provided $150 million upfront for access to Recursion's platform in neuroscience and oncology. These partnerships provide both capital and clinical development expertise that complement Recursion's computational capabilities.^[3]

References

1. Recursion Pharmaceuticals. "Recursion Pipeline Update Q1 2026." May 3, 2026. https://ir.recursion.com/news-releases
2. Recursion Pharmaceuticals. "Our Platform." 2026. https://www.recursion.com/platform
3. Recursion Pharmaceuticals. "Partnerships." 2026. https://www.recursion.com/partnerships