Helsinn Healthcare & InVirtuoLabs sign a Strategic Collaboration in AI-Driven Drug Discovery
Partnership combines Helsinn proprietary compound library with InVirtuoLabs generative AI platform to accelerate discovery of novel therapeutics
Lugano, Switzerland – February 25, 2026 – Helsinn Healthcare SA (Helsinn), a global pharmaceutical group focused on supporting patients with cancer and chronic diseases, and In Virtuo Laboratories SA (InVirtuoLabs), a Lugano-based drug discovery company specializing in AI-powered generative chemistry, today announced a strategic collaboration to discover and develop novel small-molecule therapeutics.
Under the terms of the agreement, Helsinn will provide InVirtuoLabs with access to a proprietary library of structurally diverse compounds, including validated hits with confirmed biological activity against an undisclosed therapeutic target. InVirtuoLabs will apply its generative chemistry platform, InVirtuoGEN, to design, optimize, and prioritize novel drug candidates. This approach enables efficient hit-to-lead progression by providing multiple chemically distinct starting points for optimization.
The collaboration aims to identify optimized lead compounds with drug-like properties, suitable for advancement into preclinical development for the proposed indications.
Gabriele Edoardo Braglia, Chief Business Officer and Deputy CEO of Helsinn, commented: “This collaboration with InVirtuoLabs represents an important step in Helsinn’s commitment to accelerating innovation through cutting-edge technologies. By combining our long-established pharmaceutical expertise with next generation AI-driven drug discovery, we are opening new avenues to deliver meaningful therapeutic solutions to patients worldwide.”
Gianvito Grasso, Founder & CEO of InVirtuoLabs, added: “For a young startup like InVirtuoLabs, an R&D agreement with a pharma company is rather rare. We hope to leverage this opportunity to showcase our technological superiority and our state-of-the-art foundational model in Generative Chemistry that generates impactful outcomes. This agreement is a testament to the trust and vison of Helsinn to innovate through AI-based drug discovery process.”
About Helsinn
Helsinn is a global pharmaceutical company that builds, manufactures, launches, and commercializes products to improve the quality of life for patients with cancer and chronic diseases, with a focus on supportive care, oncology and dermato-oncology. Headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, Helsinn has direct commercial operations in the U.S., manufacturing operations in Ireland, offices in China, and a network of trusted partners enabling a commercial presence in 90 countries.
Established in 1976, Helsinn is a third-generation family-owned company with broad pharmaceutical and technical expertise. For half a century, Helsinn has been operating with integrity, passion, and quality. The company continuously fosters innovation for its patients and embraces sustainable growth as a core element of its strategic vision.
To learn more about Helsinn, please visit www.helsinn.com or follow us on LinkedIn and X.
About InVirtuoLabs
InVirtuoLabs is a biotech startup founded in Lugano, Switzerland in 2024. The startup closed its pre-seed funding round of €2.85 million in February 2025, marking a decisive acceleration in pharmaceutical research. Leveraging methods of advanced artificial intelligence and molecular simulations including generative models, the startup drastically reduces the time and cost of drug development, making treatments more accessible.
At the heart of InVirtuoLabs' innovation is InVirtuoPlatform, its Next Generation Virtual Lab, a proprietary platform that uses AI and molecular modeling to identify and optimize drugs with proven precision. This approach allows for doubling success rates compared to current research methods, drastically reducing both costs, currently exceeding €2.4 billion per drug, and development times, currently averaging 12 years.
In October 2025, InVirtuoLabs unveiled InVirtuoGEN, an AI model that outperformed NVIDIA on every benchmark the tech giant itself proposed, setting a new global performance standard for generative drug discovery. Following its record-setting performance, InVirtuoGEN has since been integrated into InVirtuoPlatform to support real-world pharmaceutical programs. The model has become part of the company’s internal drug discovery pipeline, accelerating the design of new treatments with higher precision, faster turnaround, and lower costs.
The startup won the first prize at the Boldbrain Startup Challenge in 2024, an acceleration program for innovative ideas organized by the Agire Foundation in collaboration with the Startup Centre of the University of Italian Switzerland (USI Startup Center), and with the support of the Department of Finance and Economy and BancaStato. InVirtuoLabs is also supported by the USI Startup Center within its incubation programs.
The InVirtuoLabs team brings together researchers specializing in the AI-based drug discovery process as well as experts with decades of experience in the pharmaceutical industry and business management.
To learn more about InVirtuoLabs, please visit www.invirtuolabs.com or follow us on LinkedIn.
For more information:
Helsinn Media Contact
Sabrina Perucchi
Group Communication Manager
Tel: +41 (0) 91 985 21 21
Email: communications@helsinn.com
InVirtuoLabs Media Contact:
Sertac Yeltekin
Founder & COO
Tel: +41 78 326 24 76
Email: sertac@invirtuolabs.com
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