GSK to advance antibody medicines for neurodegenerative diseases

GSK has agreed to develop novel medicines for neurodegenerative diseases, as part of a global licensing agreement with ABL Bio Inc, for up to £2.075 billion. This is subject to certain milestone payments across multiple potential programmes. The licensing deal will utilise ABL Bio’s blood-brain barrier shuttle platform Grabody-B, to advance multiple programmes across therapeutic modalities including antibody, polynucleotide or oligonucleotides, such as siRNA and ASOs.

ABL Bio’s bispecific antibody platform is designed to enable drugs to cross the blood-brain barrier and provide efficient delivery to the brain, via the Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 Receptor (IGF1R) as a target.

Advancing antibody therapies for neurodegenerative diseases

GSK will manage preclinical and clinical development, manufacturing, and commercial activities.

Under the agreement, ABL Bio will receive up to £77.1 million for GSK to advance these medicines for neurodegenerative diseases. Royalty payments on net sales are also available, subject to commercial success.

“This agreement reflects our commitment to innovative platform technologies to overcome the [blood-brain barrier] and thus open entirely new opportunities for treating these devastating diseases, an important component of our emerging pipeline,” explained Christopher Austin, Senior Vice President of Research Technologies, GSK.

This transaction “will serve as a great opportunity to strengthen ABL Bio’s position in the neurodegenerative disease treatment market through the potential commercialisation of Grabody-B and to expand the modality areas where Grabody-B can be utilised. 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,” stated Sang Hoon Lee, CEO of ABL Bio.

GSK’s commitment to drug development

In January, GSK made another billion-dollar investment through its $1.15 billion acquisition of the biopharma company IDRx Inc. The agreement is set to advance development of a tyrosine kinase inhibitor as a treatment for gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GIST).