|
 AbbVie and Calico said on Wednesday the initial funding would help
Calico use its scientific expertise to create research facilities in
the San Francisco Bay area. Each partner could ultimately invest an
additional $500 million in the collaboration.
"Calico expects to begin filling critical positions immediately and
plans to establish a substantial team of scientists and research
staff in the San Francisco Bay area," the companies said in a joint
release.
A year ago Google announced it was creating Calico, to be headed by
Art Levinson, the former chief executive officer and guiding force
behind Genentech, a cancer company considered by many to be the most
successful biotechnology company in history. Levinson left after
Genentech was bought by Roche Holding AG.
Calico is run separately from Google, the world's largest Internet
search company, and focuses on such issues as life-threatening
diseases and problems affecting mental and physical agility due to
aging.
Google increasingly is placing itself at the intersection of medical
science and technology. It also backs privately held 23andMe, which
sells a $99 DNA test that provides customers ancestry-related
genetic reports and uninterpreted raw genetic data.
AbbVie said it was the first drugmaker to forge a collaboration with
Calico. Under the deal, AbbVie will provide scientific and clinical
development support and commercial expertise.
The partners will share costs equally, and profits, if drugs are
successfully developed.
Calico will be responsible for discovering drugs and studying them
in early stage trials during the first five years. It will continue
for a 10-year period to advance its experimental drugs through Phase
2a studies, small mid-stage trials that establish a likelihood the
drugs may work in larger studies.
Under the deal, AbbVie will back Calico's early research and,
following completion of Phase 2a studies, will have the option to
manage late-stage trials and marketing.
AbbVie was spun off in early 2013 from Abbott Laboratories Inc,
and sells Humira, a $13 billion-a-year treatment for rheumatoid
arthritis which is the world's top-selling medicine.
[to top of second column] |
Humira accounts for 60 percent of AbbVie sales, and the suburban
Chicago company needs new drugs to lessen its heavy reliance on the
product. It is developing drugs for arthritis, hepatitis C, cancer,
multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease.
AbbVie in July agreed to pay $55 billion for Dublin-based Shire Plc,
moving it into the lucrative arena of rare diseases, in a deal that
will allow it to slash its tax bill by relocating to Britain.
Richard Gonzalez, AbbVie's chief executive, on Wednesday said the
Calico deal will further diversify his company. "This collaboration
demonstrates our commitment to exploring new areas of medicine."
Calico is attracting a growing stable of research heavy-hitters,
including Hal Barron, a former chief medical officer and head of
product development at Roche who is now Calico's research chief.
Well known geneticist David Botstein is Calico's chief scientific
officer, while remaining a professor at Princeton University.
Cynthia Kenyon, a biochemist at the University of California, San
Francisco, who is a leading authority on aging genetics, left
earlier this year to become Calico's vice president for aging
research.
(Reporting by Ransdell Pierson in New York; Editing by Jeffrey
Benkoe, Bernard Orr and Lisa Shumaker)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
