AbbVie and Gilead Sciences each used the holiday season to reward their pipelines with a new clinical-stage cancer drug.
Zejing Biopharmaceutical unwrapped a $100 million upfront payment from AbbVie in return for the option to license alveltamig, also known as ZG006, outside of China. Zejing has been evaluating the DLL3-targeting trispecific T-cell binder in late-stage trials for “cellular lung cancer and other DLL3-expressing malignancies,” according to Zejing’s filing with the Shanghai stock exchange (PDF).
Under the Dec. 30 agreement, AbbVie will hand over another $60 million if it takes up its ex-China license option, while milestone payments tied to the alveltamig program could potentially reach $1.07 billion.
DLL3 is expressed in more than 70% of small cell lung cancers (SCLCs). Amgen already targets the DLL3 protein with its approved SCLC therapy Imdelltra, while other candidates in development include Daiichi Sankyo and Merck & Co.’s bispecific T-cell engager MK-6070 and an antibody-drug conjugate that Roche licensed from Innovent last year.
Related
Meanwhile, Gilead is offering a more modest $25 million upfront payment for the rights to Repare Therapeutics’ polymerase theta (Polθ) ATPase inhibitor, dubbed RP-3467. A further $5 million is due to come Repare’s way “upon completion of specified technology transfer activities,” according to a Dec. 24 release.
Repare has touted RP-3467 as a “highly potent, small molecule inhibitor of Polθ that is a synthetic lethality target associated with BRCA mutations and other genomic alterations.”
The Canadian biotech has been evaluating the therapy in a phase 1 study as both a monotherapy and in combination with AstraZeneca and Merck & Co.’s Lynparza to treat epithelial ovarian cancer, metastatic breast cancer, metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer or pancreatic adenocarcinoma.
In a statement, Repare CEO Steve Forte described the Gilead deal as the “third and most significant portfolio transaction” for the company in 2025 after it licensed a paused PKMYT1 inhibitor program to Debiopharm and offloaded its discovery platforms to DCx Biotherapeutics.
Meanwhile, Repare is in the process of being acquired by nonprofit biotech XenoTherapeutics. The Gilead deal should bump up the amount that Repare’s shareholders receive once the acquisition closes, according to the release.
Related
Another licensing deal announced over the holidays was ASK Pharm’s 1.6 billion Chinese yuan ($230 million) deal for the China rights to Adlai Nortye’s preclinical pan-RAS inhibitor AN9025. The deal value includes more than $20 million in a combination of upfront and near-term milestone payments.
AN9025 has been designed to target a broad spectrum of RAS mutations across various tumor types, according to Adlai, with preclinical studies demonstrating that the therapy “effectively inhibits RAS-mutant cancers with potent and durable efficacy.”
A phase 1 trial is penciled in to launch in the first quarter of this year, the Hangzhou, China- and New Jersey-based biotech added.
“This partnership marks a pivotal milestone in our strategic innovation upgrade, signaling our decisive move into frontier innovation with high entry barriers,” Jingfei Ma, Ph.D., director and general manager of China-based ASK, said in a Dec. 29 release.
“By leveraging our complementary strengths in R&D, clinical development, and commercialization, we aim to accelerate the development of AN9025 project while reinforcing our existing pipeline, ultimately delivering high-value therapeutic solutions to patients in China and around the world,” he added.
