AbbVie and Calico Extend Collaboration Amid Depletion of $1 Billion Funding to Advance Therapies for Age-Related Diseases

Compiled and translated by | Fan Dongdong

Recently, AbbVie and Calico announced a further expansion of their collaboration to research, develop, and bring to market new therapies for patients with age-related diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. This marks a broadening of the scope of their partnership, which was initially established in 2014.

Calico, which has further expanded its collaboration with AbbVie, was co-founded by Alphabet and Dr. Arthur D. Levinson, CEO of Calico. Dr. Levinson previously served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Genentech, a member of the Roche Group. As part of the collaboration, Calico and AbbVie will leverage advanced technologies and capabilities to jointly research and develop novel therapies. AbbVie will provide the necessary scientific and clinical development support and will be responsible for the future commercialization of the products.

Since 2014, the collaboration between the two companies has yielded over 20 early-stage R&D projects targeting immuno-oncology and neurodegenerative diseases, alongside progress in the field of aging biology.

In addition, AbbVie and Calico have advanced three targeted therapies for neurodegenerative diseases and cancer into clinical trials. For example, two PTPN2 inhibitors targeting a key immuno-oncology target are currently in Phase I studies; these agents act at multiple steps of the cancer-immunity cycle.

In 2018, AbbVie announced an expanded collaboration with Calico to discover, develop, and commercialize new treatments for patients with age-related diseases. AbbVie and Calico will share costs and profits equally, with each company committing an additional $500 million to the partnership. Today, the $1 billion investment is nearly depleted. Under the terms of this latest agreement, the collaboration will be extended for an additional three years beyond 2022. Calico will be responsible for research and early development through 2025, and for advancing the collaborative projects to Phase 2a by 2030. AbbVie will continue to support Calico's early R&D efforts and will have the option to take over late-stage clinical development and commercialization activities upon completion of the Phase 2a trials.

Notably, this is not the only recent collaboration announced by AbbVie. In early June, AbbVie announced an exclusive collaboration and option agreement with Caraway Therapeutics to jointly develop and commercialize Caraway’s TMEM175-targeting small molecule therapy, with AbbVie making an upfront payment of $17 million. Upon Caraway’s completion of certain preclinical R&D activities for the collaborative program, AbbVie will have the option to license the program to proceed with activities related to the preparation of an Investigational New Drug (IND) application, clinical development, and commercialization.

References:

1、AbbVie and Calico Announce Second Extension of Collaboration Focused on Aging and Age-Related Diseases

2、AbbVie hits go on $1B re-upped Calico deal as the Google life science spin-out continues I-O, neuro push