Eli Lilly Enters $2.6 Bn Deal with South Korea’s ABL Bio

The partnership aims to advance multiple drug candidates across different modalities and therapeutic areas by leveraging the versatility of the Grabody platform.

U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly has signed a license, research, and collaboration agreement with South Korea–based ABL Bio, a specialist in bispecific antibody technologies, to advance new therapeutics using ABL Bio’s Grabody platform in a deal valued at up to $2.5 billion.

The partnership aims to advance multiple drug candidates across different modalities and therapeutic areas by leveraging the versatility of the Grabody platform.

Under the agreement, Lilly will pay an upfront $40 million, with potential future payments of as much as $2.56 billion tied to development, regulatory, and commercial milestones.

The companies have not disclosed the number of programs included in the partnership or the specific targets and indications they intend to pursue

Commenting on the new collaboration, Sang Hoon Lee, CEO of ABL Bio, said, “This agreement not only validates the business potential of the Grabody Platform, but also demonstrates the continued expansion of modalities to which Grabody can be applied. We believe Grabody has already established a strong foothold, and we intend to build on this momentum by broadening its indications into therapeutic areas with high unmet medical needs, including obesity and muscle diseases.”

ABL Bio’s Grabody platform, which underpins the collaboration, is designed to generate bispecific antibodies with high target specificity. The platform enables multiple therapeutic applications, including Grabody-B for central nervous system disorders, and Grabody-T and Grabody-I for oncology, leveraging the CD137 and PD-L1 pathways to precisely direct immune responses against tumours.

Previously, the company had also licensed Grabody-B to GSK in a multi-billion-dollar agreement to develop neurodegenerative disease therapies.

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