iBio Inc ( IBIO ) shares are surging after the company entered into a collaboration agreement with AstralBio Inc. on Wednesday to discover, engineer, and develop antibodies to treat obesity and other cardiometabolic conditions.

The shares are trading over 100% with a strong session volume of 38.98 million compared to an average volume of average Volume 106.958K as per data from Benzinga Pro.

This micro-cap biotech player is valued at $4 million, with an enterprise value of $17.7 million.

Tuesday, iBio announced the closing of a $15 million private placement financing with ADAR1 Capital Management, Lynx1 Capital Management, Ikarian Capital, and other institutional investors. 

The company will use some of the net proceeds to support new partnerships, such as this collaboration with AstralBio.

As part of the collaboration, iBio has granted an exclusive license to its AI-powered technology to identify and engineer four targets for cardiometabolic disease, of which AstralBio may continue the pre-clinical development and deploy its proven drug development expertise to advance candidates to an Investigational New Drug (IND) application. 

iBio has the exclusive option to license three cardiometabolic targets from AstralBio and will receive the rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize those targets upon exercise. 

As a result of this collaboration, iBio and AstralBio have agreed to initiate the development of a lead program focused on targeting the transforming growth factor beta (TGFb) superfamily for the treatment of muscle wasting and obesity. 

Upon mutual consent, the parties may expand the collaboration to include additional targets in other fields.

“We are confident our AI-enabled technology is exceptionally well positioned to develop antibodies against challenging targets in the cardiometabolic space,” said iBio’s CEO and Chief Scientific Officer, Martin Brenner.

Price Action: IBIO shares are up 147.80% at $2.84 on the last check Wednesday.