Eli Lilly's back-to-back acquisitions are making headlines, and now the company has signed one more cheque to purchase South Korea’s ABL Bio to gain access to reliable technology and bolster and expand its pipeline. Neither company has disclosed their planning for the programs they will be collaborating on or what they will prioritise in their partnership and operations.
Lilly paid $40 million upfront payment and confidently promised to reach the milestone worth $2.56 billion last Friday. The pharma will enable ABL to accelerate the Grabody platform in return for the investment to establish various bispecific antibodies.
ABL’s Grabody platform allows the creation of bispecific antibodies that can be engineered well to reach out to the main proteins holding peak specificity. The biotech has equipped this technology to different therapeutic spaces like Grabody-I and Grabody-T for cancers and Grabody-B for central nervous system diseases that aim at tumors via the PDL1 and CD137 pathways accordingly.
Following ABL’s proven potential, GSK made an upfront payment worth $50 million with around $2.66 billion in profit to collaborate with ABL and implement Grabody-B to establish antibody-related therapies that have the potential to face the tough blood-brain barrier. British Pharma also haven’t uncovered their plans and on which disease they will work on.
Lilly has invested its equity shares in ABL, with the purchase of 175,079 shares for a total worth of KRW 22 billion ($15 million). Lilly bumped into this deal right a few days after it put $1.2 billion on the desk to collaborate with Boston’s SangeneBio. This deal will enable the pharma to elevate Sangene’s exclusive LEAD technology, which can focus RNAi therapies on fat and muscle tissues, including the central nervous system.
In May, Lilly invested $1.3 billion in South Korean-based Rznomics biotech to advance the development of the latter’s RNA editing technology for hearing loss. This collaboration will be an ideal choice for Lilly’s gene therapy AK-OTOF, which is under testing to qualify as a genetic form of hearing loss. Lilly has been a part of many buy-outs and partnerships that have accelerated the business game overall with its mindful contribution in the vast healthcare sector.
With this latest acquisition of ABL Bio, Lilly has added one more feather to its advancement and uplifted its business skills, bestowing development to its company’s infrastructure and excellence space.
Mansi Kadam is a market research writer with over 3 years of experience analyzing trends in the healthcare industry. At Towards Healthcare, she covers innovations in medical sector, sustainability initiatives, and the evolving regulatory landscape.
