GSK has continued to flesh out its neuroscience strategy with a 2 billion pound sterling ($2.5 billion) deal to use a South Korean company’s tech to bypass the blood-brain barrier.
ABL Bio has developed its Grabody-B platform to target the insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R) in order to help transport drugs for neurodegenerative disease over the notoriously tricky barrier and into the brain.
The Seongnam, South Korea-based biotech has agreed to transfer “Grabody-B-related technology and know-how” to GSK, according to a Monday, April 7 release, with the British Big Pharma taking responsibility for developing any resulting drugs from preclinical work through to commercialization.
In return, GSK will hand over 38.5 million pounds ($49.5 million) upfront, with another 38.6 million pounds ($49.6 million) potentially to follow in near-term payments. When longer-term research, development and commercialization payments are also taken into account, as well as the option for GSK to expand the scope of the program, the total biobucks attached to the deal swells to 2.07 billion pounds ($2.5 billion).
GSK expanded its neuroscience credentials at the end of last year, penning a pact with Danish biotech Muna Therapeutics to examine postmortem human brains in efforts to identify several new drug targets for Alzheimer’s disease. This was on top of an agreement with Flagship-founded Vesalius Therapeutics that included a preclinical small molecule initially targeting Parkinson’s disease.
“There is a critical need for new therapeutics to treat neurodegenerative brain diseases, which are rapidly increasing in prevalence due to the aging of the population,” Christopher Austin, M.D., senior vice president of research technologies for GSK, said in this morning’s release.
“Many of the most promising new therapies are antibodies, which cannot efficiently reach the brain without a shuttle to get them across the [blood brain barrier],” Austin added. “This agreement reflects our commitment to innovative platform technologies to overcome the BBB and thus open entirely new opportunities for treating these devastating diseases, an important component of our emerging pipeline.”
ABL has already been tapped up by the likes of Sanofi and I-Mab to work on bispecific antibodies for Parkinson’s and gastric cancer, respectively.
In the release, the biotech’s CEO Sang Hoon Lee said the agreement with GSK “will serve as a great opportunity to strengthen ABL Bio's position in the neurodegenerative disease treatment market through the potential commercialization of Grabody-B and to expand the modality areas where Grabody-B can be utilized."
“Given the increasing number of patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, we hope this partnership will accelerate the development of innovative treatments and bring renewed hope to patients worldwide,” the CEO added.