Ab­b­Vie jumps in­to CD47 game, en­gi­neers $3B deal with am­bi­tious Chi­nese play­er

Gilead’s $4.9 bil­lion bet on Forty Sev­en ev­i­dent­ly trig­gered a rush among Big Phar­ma to look for their own drug that tar­gets the CD47 “don’t-eat-me” sig­nal. Ab­b­Vie has now jumped on the band­wag­on, pay­ing $180 mil­lion up­front to li­cense an an­ti­body out of Chi­na.

I-Mab is keep­ing Chi­na rights to lem­zopar­limab, which chair­man Jing­wu Zang says dis­tin­guish­es it­self by min­i­miz­ing bind­ing to red blood cells and there­fore avoid­ing side ef­fects such as ane­mia.

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