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.

The biotech industry has faced repeated calls to diversify its workforce — and in the last year, those calls got a lot louder. Though women account for just under half of all biotech employees around the world, they occupy very few places in C-suites, and even fewer make it to the helm.

Some companies are listening, according to a recent BIO survey which showed that this year’s companies were 2.5 times more likely to have a diversity and inclusion program compared to last year’s sample. But we still have a long way to go. Women represent just 31% of biotech executives, BIO reported. And those numbers are even more stark for women of color.

A year after raising a $47 million launch round, the fungi-loving drug hunters at Hexagon Bio have more than doubled their coffers.

Hexagon announced today that it raised another $61 million for its efforts to design cancer and infectious disease drugs based on insights mined from the DNA in millions of species of fungi. The new financing brings Hexagon’s committed funding to over $108 million.