AbbVie, Frontier Medicines Partner to Develop Novel Drug Therapies

AbbVie and Frontier Medicines recently announced a multi-year global strategic collaboration to discover, develop, and commercialize a pipeline of innovative novel drug therapies against difficult-to-drug protein targets. 

Under the collaboration, the companies will utilize Frontier’s proprietary chemoproteomics platform to identify small molecules for programs directed to novel E3 ligases and certain oncology and immunology targets, AbbVie explained.

"AbbVie is focused on making investments in promising new technologies that assist us in our mission to develop innovative medicines," Jose-Carlos Gutiérrez-Ramos, PhD, vice president of discovery at AbbVie, said in the announcement. 

"One of our key strategic focus areas is targeted protein degradation and chemoproteomics, and this collaboration with Frontier Medicines will be highly synergistic and complementary to our ongoing efforts,” Gutiérrez-Ramos continued. 

Chemoproteomics-based screening has the potential to allow targeting of a broader range of proteins. AbbVie and Frontier will choose specific immunology and oncology targets for the collaboration that are considered “well-validated” but also inaccessible.

This will allow the companies to develop highly differentiated and effective therapeutics, according to the announcement. 

Under the collaboration, AbbVie will pay Frontier $55 million and reimburse the company’s research and development costs through defined stages of pre-clinical development.

Additionally, Frontier will be eligible to receive success-based development and commercial milestone payments of nearly $1 billion, in addition to royalty payments on commercialized products.

AbbVie will assume full responsibility for global development and commercialization activities and costs for the programs. And the company will have the right to expand the collaboration in the future. 

"AbbVie's commitment to innovative therapies makes them an ideal partner in the development and commercialization of new medicines for cancer and immunological diseases," said Chris Varma, PhD, Frontier's co-founder, chairman, and CEO. 

"With our powerful chemoproteomics platform, we are greatly expanding the universe of therapeutic targets that can be accessed with small molecule drugs. This partnership enables us to build a shared pipeline of novel therapeutics with AbbVie, while Frontier continues to independently advance our internal programs into the clinic,” Varma stated. 

The collaboration between AbbVie and Frontier is just one of the novel drug collaborations AbbVie entered into this year.

At the end of June, the company signed a broad collaboration agreement to jointly develop and commercialize Genmab’s three early-stage investigational antibody therapies for cancer. 

Together, the companies will develop Genmab’s next-generation bispecific antibody programs, epcoritamab (DuoBody-CD3xCD20), DuoHexaBody-CD37, and DuoBody-CD3x5T4.

The companies will share commercial responsibilities in the US and Japan for epcoritamab, with AbbVie responsible for further global commercialization, according to the June partnership announcement. 

Other top pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca and Novartis, also shifted their focus to researching and developing novel drug therapies. 

A week before the AbbVie and Genmab collaboration, AstraZeneca partnered with Accent Therapeutics to discover, develop, and commercialize novel cancer therapeutics targeting RNA-modifying proteins (RMPs).

The companies will focus on targeting RMPs proteins that control RNA biology and attempt to address disruptions that can lead to cancer and cause resistance to medicine.

Then at the beginning of November, Novartis and Molecular Partners AG announced a collaboration in the form of an option and license agreement to develop, manufacture, and commercialize Molecular Partners’ anti-COVID-19 DARPin program, consisting of two COVID-19 antiviral therapies.  

The collaboration will leverage Molecular Partners’ proprietary DARPin technologies and Novartis’ expertise in global drug development, regulatory affairs, manufacturing, and commercialization to advance the program in light of the ongoing pandemic. 

Specifically, the therapeutic type will be key to quickly developing the two potential COVID-19 antiviral therapies and getting the treatments to patients worldwide, the companies said in the November announcement.