AbbVie ends its third oncology deal in two weeks

The cell therapy-focused biotech Caribou Biosciences is the latest in a succession of companies to be culled from AbbVie's business development activities. In an SEC filing posted on Tuesday Caribou disclosed that AbbVie had decided to terminate their licensing agreement from February 2021, stating that this was based on "AbbVie's strategic focus". The deal, for which AbbVie paid $40 million up front, included the development of two allogeneic Car-T cell therapies using Caribou's Cas12a Crispr hybrid RNA-DNA (chRDNA) genome editing and cell therapy platforms. The chRDNA technology builds on the concept of adding DNA to RNA Crispr, reducing off-target editing to withstand host immune attack and avoid Car-T cell rejection. Two weeks ago, AbbVie turned down an option to acquire rights to Harpoon's trispecific anti-BCMA T-cell engaging MAb HPN217, and this was followed by last week's termination of the lemzoparlimab/CD47 deal with I-Mab. Together, these three agreements amounted to over $2.1 billion in up-front and potential milestone payments from which AbbVie had already cashed out $320 million