AbbVie, Genmab enter $4B cancer immunotherapy partnership
11 June 2020 | News
The collaboration injects $750 million upfront payment to Genmab to focus on bispecific antibodies and drug discovery research with commercial responsibilities at Japan and US
image courtesy: freepik
US-based AbbVie and Genmab announced on 10 June 2020 that they had formed the partnership that will focus on bispecific antibodies, a kind of immunotherapy, across haematological and solid tumour cancers. They will additionally partner in discovery research.
Under the terms of the deal, AbbVie will pay Genmab $750 million upfront, along with up to $3.15 billion in milestone payments.
The partnership focuses on three bispecific antibody development programs:
- epcoritamab, which targets the cell-surface antigen CD20 as well as CD3 on T cells
- DuoHexaBody-CD37
- DuoBody-CD3x5T4
The companies will split commercial responsibilities in the U.S. and Japan for epcoritamab, while AbbVie will be responsible for further globalization, with Genmab booking net U.S. and Japanese sales and receiving tiered royalties for other territories. The companies will then share global development and commercialization for the other two antibodies while sharing commercialization responsibilities for the U.S. and Japan. For the discovery research partnership, Genmab will conduct Phase I studies, while AbbVie will have opt-in rights.
