Ab­b­Vie is arm­ing it­self with an­oth­er set of bow and ar­rows to shoot at BC­MA in mul­ti­ple myelo­ma — and this time it has turned to col­lab­o­ra­tors at Har­poon Ther­a­peu­tics.

In pay­ing $50 mil­lion for an op­tion to li­cense HPN217, Ab­b­Vie gains ex­clu­sive ac­cess to a Tri-spe­cif­ic T cell Ac­ti­vat­ing Con­struct, or Tri­TAC, that is be­ing steered to a Phase I/II tri­al. The dos­ing of the first pa­tient will call for an­oth­er $50 mil­lion in con­tin­gent mile­stone pay­ment. Once Har­poon comes up with the da­ta, its phar­ma gi­ant part­ner will de­cide whether to of­fi­cial­ly add it to the ar­se­nal.

It is an ar­se­nal that al­ready fea­tures a CD3/BC­MA bis­pe­cif­ic from Teneo­bio, a lit­tle known play­er un­til Ab­b­Vie swooped in with $90 mil­lion in cash this Feb­ru­ary. The Sil­i­con Val­ley biotech’s pitch cen­ters on a T cell en­gager plat­form that “in­volves a com­bi­na­tion of a heavy chain on­ly an­ti-BC­MA binder and a nov­el an­ti-CD3 binder, which de­cou­ples tar­get can­cer cell killing from cy­tokine re­lease.”

The re­la­tion­ship with MPM-backed Har­poon dates back to 2017, when Ab­b­Vie dished out $17 mil­lion up­front to kick off some dis­cov­ery ef­forts on the Tri­TAC plat­form. The trans­ac­tion an­nounced to­day can be worth up to $510 mil­lion, the com­pa­nies said.

Na­tal­ie Sacks

“As our pipeline of ini­tial Tri­TAC clin­i­cal can­di­dates ad­vance in prostate and ovar­i­an can­cers, we are thrilled to part­ner with Ab­b­Vie in pur­suit of ther­a­pies geared to­wards hema­to­log­ic can­cers,” Har­poon CMO Na­tal­ie Sacks said in a state­ment.

BC­MA is a par­tic­u­lar­ly hot tar­get for mul­ti­ple myelo­ma, en­tic­ing a swarm of CAR-T de­vel­op­ers like blue­bird and Juno as well as in­spir­ing no­table ef­forts to de­vel­op bis­pecifics by Am­gen and Re­gen­eron. At last count, there were 38 BC­MA-tar­get­ed agents in clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

On top of HPN217, Ab­b­Vie is al­so dou­bling down on the dis­cov­ery front, ex­pand­ing the agree­ment to in­clude two more Tri­TAC mol­e­cules and the op­tion to se­lect up to four ad­di­tion­al tar­gets. Each se­lect­ed tar­get could earn Har­poon up to $310 mil­lion in to­tal.

While the US biosimilars industry has generally been a disappointment since its inception, with FDA approving 33 biosimilars since 2015, just a fraction of those have immediately followed their approvals with launches. And more than a handful of biosimilars for two of the biggest blockbusters of all time — AbbVie’s Humira and Amgen’s Enbrel — remain approved by FDA but still have not launched because of legal settlements.

As President Biden’s Build Back Better Act — and, with it, potentially the Democrats’ last shot at major drug pricing reforms in the foreseeable future — remains on life support, the Congressional Budget Office isn’t helping their case.

The CBO last week released a new slide deck, outlining an update to its model on how Medicare negotiations might take a bite out of new drugs making it to market. The new model estimates a 10% long-term reduction in the number of new drugs, whereas a previous CBO report from August estimated that 8% fewer new drugs will enter the market over 30 years.