As AbbVie continues to tout its next generation of immunology drugs behind Humira, it’s buying an early-stage startup to boost its longer-term prospects in inflammatory bowel disease.
The Chicago-area pharma giant, which will have a new CEO on Monday, said Thursday it will pay $250 million in cash to acquire Celsius Therapeutics and its Phase 1-completed asset CEL383. Celsius was last valued at $120 million, according to venture data firm PitchBook.
The Cambridge, MA-based startup has been relatively quiet over the years. Among its co-founders are computational biologist Aviv Regev and Christoph Lengauer. Well-known investors Third Rock Ventures, Google’s GV and Casdin Capital, among others, launched the biotech with $65 million in 2018 and refueled it with an $83 million Series B in 2022.
Regev now leads research and early development at Genentech, and Lengauer’s biotech incubator and investment firm Curie.Bio announced a $380 million fund on Wednesday.
AbbVie is betting it could be the first to bring forth an anti-TREM1 antibody for IBD, noting the gene “acts as an amplifier of inflammation.” Celsius completed a healthy volunteer study of CEL383 in January.
Earlier this year, AbbVie also bought Landos Biopharma and its IBD drug NX-13, which is in Phase 2 in ulcerative colitis. Again, AbbVie claimed it could be a first-in-class drug as an oral NLRX1 agonist. The pharma paid less for that public company, dishing out about $137.5 million upfront.
Rob MichaelAs Humira weathers its patent cliff, AbbVie is hoping to build out a next-generation immunology portfolio.
It already markets two blockbusters, Rinvoq and Skyrizi, and has multiple in the works behind that: lutikizumab, ABBV-668, Alpine’s ALPN-101, Calibr’s CLF065 and others. The company expects “robust growth” for Skyrizi and Rinvoq “through until 2033,” incoming CEO Rob Michael said during a recent Goldman Sachs investor conference, according to a transcript from AbbVie.
“We have been active bringing in new mechanisms that we think can help raise standard-of-care, and that was part of our BD strategy. We’ve been successful. We have a number of deals we’ve announced, and that’s something we’ll continue to pursue,” Michael said. “Think of these as early-stage opportunities. There’s different risk profiles for each of them, but we’re very optimistic about what we’re picking in terms of the various mechanisms.”
AbbVie’s BD strategy in the space has been mostly focused on partnerships and licensing deals this year. Its tie-ups include $150 million upfront earlier this month for the global rights to FutureGen Biopharmaceutical‘s TL1A antibody FG-M701, $48 million upfront to snag the worldwide license to OSE Immunotherapeutics‘ monoclonal antibody OSE-230, and $64 million upfront for work on oncology and immunology biologics from Tentarix Biotherapeutics.
Celsius had other IBD programs in the works after having analyzed more than 5 million cells, according to its website. The startup also had oncology programs in the preclinical phase and a colorectal cancer collaboration with Servier. AbbVie didn’t mention the oncology work in its deal announcement, and a spokesperson said it did not have further comment beyond the release.