Dive Brief:
- AbbVie will pay $200 million to acquire privately held Nimble Therapeutics and its pipeline of oral peptide drugs for immune diseases like psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease, the pharmaceutical company said Friday.
- Chief among that pipeline is an oral therapy designed to inhibit a protein called IL-23, the same target of AbbVie’s blockbuster injection Skyrizi. That drug is in preclinical testing, as are two other candidates Nimble has disclosed for generalized myasthenia gravis and IBD.
- In addition to Nimble’s pipeline, AbbVie also noted that the acquisition will give it access to the Madison, Wisconsin-based company’s technology for synthesizing, screening and optimizing peptide-based drug candidates.
Dive Insight:
AbbVie’s acquisition of Nimble will be the pharmaceutical company’s third buyout of an immune drug developer this year. The deals are aimed at strengthening AbbVie’s immunology pipeline, and coincide with a rush of investment into new medicines that can regulate the immune system overreaction that drives diseases like psoriasis and IBD.
In the case of Nimble’s lead candidate, the purported innovation is in formulation. Along with Skyrizi, there are several other approved drugs that curb inflammation by blocking IL-23 signaling, among them Johnson & Johnson’s Tremfya and Eli Lilly’s Omvoh. As antibody therapies, those drugs are all administered through injections.
Nimble’s peptide is delivered orally. The company claims it’s designed its drug to combine the potent activity associated with injectable IL-23 drugs with an extended “half life,” or time in which drug concentrations halve.
Johnson & Johnson, along with partner Protagonist Therapeutics, has also been exploring oral IL-23 drugs and in November disclosed results from a Phase 3 trial of their medicine, dubbed icotrokinra. Treatment significantly cleared skin in most people with psoriasis enrolled in the study, though its efficacy seemed to fall short of the bar set by injectable IL-23 drugs.
“The addition of Nimble’s pipeline to AbbVie’s existing pipeline, combined with our deep clinical and translational expertise in immunology, represents an important growth opportunity,” said Jonathon Sedgwick, AbbVie’s global head of discovery research, said in a statement.
Nimble has been in operation since 2019, when it spun out of Roche and raised Series A funding from the pharmaceutical company’s venture arm and Telegraph Hill Partners. The company’s CEO and several members of its leadership team previously worked at Roche, with whom it has collaborated with on research.
In addition to the upfront payment, AbbVie has pledged “certain interim funding payments” under the deal, and Nimble shareholders will be eligible for another payout that’s tied development progress.
The other drugs in Nimble’s pipeline include one oral drug designed to block “C5” signaling in generalized myasthenia gravis, and another that inhibits a protein known as TL1A.
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- Source: https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/abbvie-nimble-acquire-deal-immune-drug-il-23/735498/