Ab­b­Vie bets that near­ly $20B in deals can bring it in­to the post-Hu­mi­ra fu­ture

The own­er of the world’s biggest drug has fi­nal­ly an­swered the ques­tion about what to do when that prod­uct goes away.

With­in the space of six days, Ab­b­Vie an­nounced two ma­jor deals — one in neu­ro­science and the oth­er in can­cer — that will chart the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture as sales from Hu­mi­ra de­te­ri­o­rate in the face of com­pe­ti­tion from cheap­er biosim­i­lars.

The planned ac­qui­si­tions of Cerev­el ($8.7B) and Im­muno­Gen ($10.1B) give the Chica­go-area phar­ma gi­ant im­me­di­ate ac­cess to an ap­proved an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate, which is poised to be­come a block­buster, and a deep neu­ro­science pipeline that CEO Rick Gon­za­lez thinks will bear out in “mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lars sales po­ten­tial” and add to the com­pa­ny’s ex­ist­ing neu­ro port­fo­lio. And it may qui­et some of the crit­i­cism about the “lack of a shiny ob­ject” in its pipeline.

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