AbbVie partners with Frontier Medicines on protein degrader development

AbbVie has announced a new partnership with precision medicine company Frontier Medicines to discover and develop small molecules therapeutics for difficult-to-treat protein targets.

The multi-year collaboration will use Frontier’s proprietary chemoproteomics platform to identify small molecules for programmes directed to novel E3 ligases and certain oncology and immunology targets.

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

"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,” he added.

Under the terms of the agreement, AbbVie will pay Frontier $55m in upfront cash, with Frontier eligible to receive additional milestone payments.

The companies will collaborate on the research and pre-clinical development of programmes directed against E3 ligase, immunology and oncology targets.

AbbVie will assume full responsibility for global development and commercialisation activities and cost for the programmes, following the successful completion of pre-clinical development.

Frontier will be eligible to receive success-based development and commercial milestone payments that could exceed $1bn, with additional royalty payments on commercialised products on top of that.

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

"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 programmes into the clinic,” he added.