In January, AbbVie and Calico’s fosigotifator failed to show significant signs of efficacy in the HEALEY ALS platform trial for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
After more than a decade of chipping away at ageing-related diseases, AbbVie has finally decided to call it quits with Google’s Calico Life Sciences.
The move, according to a Wednesday report from STAT News, which confirmed the termination through internal emails the publication was able to view, will also involve layoffs. Around 100 chemists will be affected, STAT noted. AbbVie will use the saved money to fund its biologics and cell and RNA therapies.
BioSpace has reached out to AbbVie for independent confirmation and comment.
AbbVie first joined with Calico in September 2014, with each company committing $250 million upfront to focus on finding therapies for aging-related diseases. Almost four years later, in June 2018, the partners deepened the relationship, each adding $500 million more to their shared pot.
Under this amended agreement, which ran through 2027, Calico was supposed to conduct research and early development until 2022 and advance programs through Phase IIa. AbbVie, in the meantime, would play a supportive role. The pharma also reserved the option to take select programs into late-stage development and commercial activities.
All told, AbbVie has invested some $1.75 billion in the Calico collaboration from 2013 to 2022, the pharma revealed in its 2024 annual report.
For all the money pumped into the partnership, however, the companies have little to show for it. In January this year, one of their assets, the eukaryotic initiation factor 2B fosigotifator, failed to significantly slow disease progression in the HEALEY ALS platform study, which is assessing the therapeutic potential of a suite of molecules for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Calico and AbbVie were also advancing ABBV-CLS-628, an anti-PAPP-A monoclonal antibody being tested for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. That asset is in a Phase II study and last month was given the FDA’s fast track designation.
AbbVie’s termination of the Calico partnership follows a string of high-profile deals this year, many of which exceed the $1-billion mark. In late June, for instance, the pharma shelled out $2.1 billion to snap up Capstan Therapeutics and gain access to its CAR T assets, including CPTX2309¸ an in vivo edited therapy for B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases, as well as the biotech’s tLNP platform, which it uses to package and deliver RNA molecules to carry out this editing.
A few weeks later, AbbVie again dug deep into its purse and brought out $700 million, which it used as an upfront payment for Ichnos Glenmark Innovation’s antibody ISB 2001, being developed for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. Contingent on certain milestones, the pharma could be on the hook for up to $1.225 billion more.
AbbVie kept the pace up in August, buying Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals’ lead depression drug bretisilocin for $1.2 billion.
