The deal, which sees AbbVie paying RemeGen $650 million upfront, gives the pharma ex-China rights to the biotech’s PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody—a modality being targeted by companies including BMS, Merck and Pfizer.
AbbVie has struck a deal to license ex-China rights to RemeGen’s PD-1/VEGF bispecific for $650 million upfront and up to $4.95 billion in milestones, joining many of its peers in one of the hottest areas of oncology R&D.
Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck and Pfizer paid $3.5 billion, $588 million and $1.25 billion, respectively, for rights to PD-1/L1/VEGF drug candidates in the past couple of years, with biobucks from those deals totalling more than $20 billion. The activity started after Akeso and Summit Therapeutics’ PD-1/VEGF bispecific beat Merck’s Keytruda in 2024, raising hopes that the mechanism can become the new backbone approach in multiple tumor types.
AbbVie has entered the field by striking a deal for RemeGen’s clinical-phase candidate RC148. Leerink Partners analysts said in a note to investors that the deal adds a possible blockbuster to AbbVie’s pipeline, though they noted the field is “crowded.” The analysts said three RemeGen trials should generate data this year.
RemeGen took RC148 into the clinic in 2023, when it began two early-phase trials in solid tumors. The biotech started studies in patients with breast cancer and non-small cell lung cancer last year. None of the studies has activated trial sites outside of China.
AbbVie said the clinical studies have shown initial favorable antitumor activity when RC148 is used with an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), an area of focus for the drugmaker, which struck a deal to buy ADC player ImmunoGen and its approved drug Elahere for $10.1 billion in 2023. AbbVie has continued to build out its ADC pipeline and portfolio, including by winning FDA approval for Emrelis last year.
While focusing on ADCs, AbbVie has maintained an interest in assets that can complement the modality. Roopal Thakkar, AbbVie’s chief scientific officer, said on an earnings call in July that the company was monitoring the PD-1/L1/VEGF class. Thakkar previously discussed the rationale behind this after fielding a question about the mechanism at a Goldman Sachs event in June.
“We always felt with ADCs it would be important to have a combination in the immuno-oncology space, so we are developing in TGF-beta and anti-CCR8. That being said, if there’s other opportunities like the one that you’ve brought up that we’ve seen some data readouts, that could be something that we would be interested in,” he said.
Thakkar also noted that adding a PD-1/L1/VEGF bispecific to AbbVie’s pipeline could support “unique” combinations with ADCs. The potential for PD-1/L1/VEGF bispecifics to make a favorable tumor microenvironment for ADCs is informing the strategies of multiple companies. Merck and Pfizer have struck multibillion-dollar deals for ADCs in recent years, while BMS’ PD-1/L1/VEGF partner BioNTech is running combination trials.