Back to the im­munol­o­gy draw­ing board, Ab­b­Vie inks dis­cov­ery deal with old Al­ler­gan part­ner

Al­ler­gan’s neu­rol­o­gy-fo­cused R&D pact with So­sei Hep­tares hasn’t been all ros­es, but the BD team at Ab­b­Vie found enough to like about the G pro­tein-cou­pled re­cep­tor spe­cial­ist’s dis­cov­ery en­gine to kick off a new col­lab­o­ra­tion. The goal? Find­ing small mol­e­cules tar­get­ing in­flam­ma­to­ry and au­toim­mune dis­eases.

The part­ner­ship starts small, with $32 mil­lion in up­front and near-term mile­stones plus po­ten­tial op­tion, de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial pay­ments of up to $377 mil­lion. But if Ab­b­Vie choos­es to ex­e­cute on all four tar­gets, the to­tal deal val­ue could grow to a size “in a sim­i­lar ball­park” to the bil­lion-dol­lar pacts with Genen­tech and Take­da, a So­sei spokesper­son told Reuters.

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