On its way up the mountain, AbbVie-partnered Alpine Immune Sciences has a new deal on the horizon: A $1.5 billion biobucks pact to license up to four drugs.
Horizon Therapeutics will dish out $40 million upfront, $15 million of which is in an equity investment, to gain exclusive rights to develop and market up to four drugs from Alpine, the companies said Thursday.
The assets are preclinical stage protein-based therapies across autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The agreement starts with the licensing of a potential first-in-class asset and the remaining three candidates will be jointly generated through a research collaboration.
Each program could attract $381 million for Seattle-based Alpine. Dublin and Chicago-based Horizon will be responsible for clinical development work and costs.
RELATED: AbbVie spends $60M, with $805M in biobucks, for Alpine Immune's lupus asset
AbbVie doled out $60 million upfront to Alpine last June for a midstage lupus and autoimmune disease asset in a deal that could balloon to $865 million in biobucks. The phase 2 lupus test is Alpine's furthest developed investigational treatment.
Horizon's EVP of R&D, Elizabeth Thompson, Ph.D., said the collaboration will expand the biopharma's early preclinical pipeline with its first multi-specific development candidate. The pharma, with 12 drugs on the market, is looking to beef up its early stage pipeline, which includes preclinical gout collaborations with Arrowhead and HemoShear.
RELATED: ASCO: Alpine reports 61% 'clinical benefit' in early trial of CD28-targeted immuno-oncology drug
The deal comes a month after the biotech lost its senior vice president of clinical development to Provention Bio, which hopes to get a rejected Type 1 diabetes drug approved by the FDA.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 5:19 p.m. ET Dec. 16 to correct the size of the AbbVie biobucks deal.