AbbVie will be gaining rights to IGI Therapeutics’ lead candidate for oncology and autoimmune diseases in an exclusive licensing agreement worth over $1.9bn.
ISB 2001 is a trispecific T-cell engager currently in phase 1 clinical development for relapsed or refractory cases of multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer affecting more than 36,000 people in the US every year.
AbbVie will receive exclusive rights to develop, manufacture and commercialise the drug across Europe, North America, Japan and Greater China.
In exchange, the Ichnos Glenmark Innovation subsidiary will receive $700m upfront and will be eligible for up to $1.225bn in milestone payments, as well as royalties on net sales.
Roopal Thakkar, executive vice-president, research and development and chief scientific officer at AbbVie, said: “Multispecifics including trispecific antibodies represent a new frontier in immuno-oncology with the potential to deliver deeper, more durable responses by engaging multiple targets simultaneously.”
Developed using IGI’s proprietary BEAT protein platform, ISB 2001 targets BCMA and CD38 on myeloma cells and CD3 on T cells.
Phase 1 data presented at this year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting showed that the candidate demonstrated a sustained overall response rate of 79% and a high complete/stringent complete response rate of 30% at active doses of at least 50µg/kg in patients with heavily pretreated relapsed/refractory myeloma.
The drug has already been orphan drug and fast track designations by the US Food and Drug Administration for relapsed/refractory myeloma.
IGI’s president and chief executive officer, Cyril Konto, said: “ISB 2001 exemplifies the potential of our BEAT protein platform to generate effective multispecifics that may overcome resistance and improve outcomes in hard-to-treat cancers.
“… Our partnership with AbbVie accelerates ISB 2001’s path to patients and sharpens our focus on advancing the next generation of BEAT-enabled assets in oncology.”
The agreement is not AbbVie’s first trispecific antibody deal of the year after it partnered with Simcere Zaiming in January to develop SIM0500, which is also in early-stage clinical development for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.
The candidate is designed to target GPRC5D, BCMA and CD3, and has already demonstrated strong T cell cytotoxicity against multiple myeloma cells by leveraging a combination of various anti-tumour effects.