AbbVie has filed a lawsuit against Genmab, accusing the Danish drugmaker of being “intentionally and willfully blind” to the theft of trade secrets. Genmab has vowed to “vigorously defend” itself against the claims.
The case, which AbbVie filed late last week, centers on antibody-drug conjugate technology used by ProfoundBio. Genmab acquired the biotech for $1.8 billion last year, securing rights to a challenger to AbbVie’s Elahere. AbbVie alleges that ProfoundBio initially failed to produce a viable ADC pipeline and, “instead of doing the hard work necessary for success,” took a shortcut by tapping a former AbbVie employee, Julia Gavrilyuk, Ph.D., for knowledge.
“Armed with AbbVie’s trade secrets and confidential information, ProfoundBio turned its luck around, filing patent applications and advancing a clinical pipeline that prominently feature what it characterized as its single ‘solution’ to the challenge of ADC development: designing ADCs with ‘hydrophilic linkers with proven payloads,’” AbbVie claimed in the lawsuit.
Gavrilyuk and Tae Han, Ph.D., had worked together at Stemcentrx and, after that biotech was acquired, AbbVie. In 2018, Han cofounded ProfoundBio. The lawsuit claims Han was aware Gavrilyuk’s work at AbbVie “involved precisely the type of ADC linkers” ProfoundBio needed. According to the lawsuit, Gavrilyuk worked closely with Stefan Munneke, Ph.D., who had the idea of using open-chain sugars in ADC linkers, at AbbVie.
The suit claims Han and ProfoundBio “knowingly and intentionally encouraged and enticed” Gavrilyuk to disclose “AbbVie’s stolen trade secret Sugar Scaffold ADC linkers and related designs.” ProfoundBio began filing patents and promoting its linker technology in 2021, according to the lawsuit, and the platform was central to its acquisition by Genmab.
AbbVie’s lawsuit names Han, Gavrilyuk, ProfoundBio and Genmab as defendants. The alleged theft of trade secrets took place before Genmab acquired ProfoundBio. However, AbbVie is arguing Genmab should have known the biotech was built on its trade secrets.
The lawsuit quotes Genmab executives discussing their high level of due diligence for the ProfoundBio buyout and notes that one executive said the innovative aspect of the ProfoundBio linker technology “is the very heavy use of sorbitol in order to increase the hydrophilicity.” Such quotes informed AbbVie’s allegation that “Genmab knew, reasonably had reason to know or was willfully blind” to the trade secrets.
Genmab sees things differently, saying it “categorically refutes allegations and will vigorously defend the company.” The Danish drugmaker called the case “yet another lawsuit among multiple recent lawsuits filed by AbbVie against competitors alleging misappropriation of its trade secrets by former AbbVie employees.” Adcentrx, Alvotech, BeiGene and Revance have been in AbbVie’s crosshairs in similar cases.
The Genmab lawsuit pits AbbVie against a close collaborator. AbbVie and Genmab co-commercialize the blood cancer drug Epkinly in the U.S. and Japan. However, Genmab established itself as a potential direct competitor to AbbVie in other areas when it bought ProfoundBio.
Rinatabart sesutecan, an ADC designed to deliver a topoisomerase-1 inhibitor to cells that express folate receptor alpha, was the centerpiece of the ProfoundBio deal. AbbVie acquired an ADC against the same target when it paid $10.1 billion for ImmunoGen in 2022.