Source: http://www.fiercebiotech.com/
AbbVie has unveiled a clutch of pacts in fields including immuno-oncology and genomics. The deals give AbbVie access to MerTK inhibitors, a source of peptide targets and genome sequencing data on 45,000 people.
All of the deals cover early-stage research, and as such it will be years before they have a notable effect on AbbVie’s fortunes. But, collectively, the pacts hint at the areas in which AbbVie sees its future resting and how it plans to go about realizing its ambitions. Two of the alliances relate to immuno-oncology, one is in the field of immunology and the fourth sees AbbVie gain access to a source of genomic data to support its future R&D efforts.
The genomics pact is perhaps the most striking. AbbVie has teamed up with the recently founded Genomics Medicine Ireland (GMI) to sequence the genomes of 45,000 volunteers. GMI and AbbVie will enroll people with “several types of immune-mediated diseases, neurological disorders and cancer” and individuals unaffected by these conditions in the sequencing program. AbbVie plans to pair these genotypic data to phenotypic information to identify new therapeutic targets and biomarkers.
Read more: http://www.fiercebiotech.com/node/470886