AbbVie to enter deal with HotSpot for up to $335m
pharmafile | December 7, 2022 | News story | Sales and Marketing |
AbbVie and HotSpot Therapeutics have begun working on a licensing option deal for HotSpot’s preclinical small-molecule allosteric therapy, which will be worth up to $335m. AbbVie plan to pay an initial $40m, with the opportunity for HotSpot to make a further $295m in option fees, R&D and further milestones and royalties.
HotSpot will use its technology, Smart Allostery, a drug discovery platform, to develop small-molecule interferon regulatory factor 5 (IRF5) inhibitors to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases. Then if AbbVie decide to license the drug, they will take over future development, manufacturing and commercialisation for the IRF5 programmes. However, HotSpot will have an option to share the R&D costs in order to receive higher royalties.
Jonathon Sedgwick, vice president and global head of discovery research at AbbVie, commented: “This collaboration with HotSpot has the potential to deliver an entirely new target class of modulators to patients with serious autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus, and will help to further strengthen our robust immunology pipeline. HotSpot’s drug discovery platform has been able to identify molecules that bind to IRF5 in a predictable, reproduceable manner potentially enabling effective drugging of what has been considered an undruggable target.”
Jonathon Montagu, co-founder and CEO of HotSpot Therapeutics, added: “Today’s agreement with AbbVie underscores our significant progress in rapidly building a substantial pipeline of novel allosteric small molecule therapeutic candidates for the treatment of autoimmune diseases and cancer. We look forward to collaborating with AbbVie, an industry leader in developing and commercialising important immunology therapeutics.”
Betsy Goodfellow
