Local drug maker Abbvie and Alphabet-owned biotech company Calico are spending $1 billion to continue their quest to treat cancer and other age-related diseases.
The two companies announced this week an extension of their collaboration to bring new therapies to market for patients suffering from diseases like cancer and neurodegeneration.
North Chicago-based Abbvie and Calico have been working together since 2014, and their partnership has produced more than two dozen early-stage programs addressing age-related disease, the companies said. Under terms of the new agreement, AbbVie and Calico will each commit an additional $500 million to the collaboration over the next three years. The two each initially provided $250 million to fund the start of the partnership.
Calico will be responsible for research and early development until 2022 and will advance collaboration projects through Phase 2a until 2027. AbbVie will support Calico in early research and development efforts and lead commercialization.
"We've built a successful collaboration – both scientifically and culturally – that is advancing cutting-edge science," Michael Severino, chief scientific officer of AbbVie, said in a statement. "Calico has attracted an outstanding team of world-class scientists and the extension of this collaboration allows us to further build on the research we've done to identify transformative treatment options for patients with age-related diseases."
Calico, founded in 2013, is owned by Google's parent company Alphabet and launched as a way for Google to tackle moonshot healthcare issues. Calico has raised $2.5 billion in total funding to date.
