Amgen Inc. AMGN, -0.37% announced Thursday a research collaboration with privately held Generate Biomedicines to discover and create protein therapeutics, which could lead to a potential payment to Generate by Amgen of $1.9 billion. Under terms of the agreement, which is initially for five clinical target programs, Amgen said it will provide $50 million in upfront funding and will pay up to $370 million in future milestones and royalties for each program.