AbbVie has agreed to acquire Capstan Therapeutics for up to $2.1bn, adding a “high-risk, high-reward” clinical-stage in vivo CAR-T candidate to its pipeline.
Capstan is developing a new type of CAR-T therapy that overcomes limitations with current options. Currently approved therapies of this kind act by upgrading patient-extracted T cells’ ability to fight cancer cells, but this method has financial and scalability hurdles, along with a lymphodepleting chemo requirement, curbing uptake.
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Capstan’s lead asset, CPTX2309, is an in vivo targeted lipid nanoparticle (LNP) anti-CD19 CAR-T therapy that could solve these issues. AbbVie certainly sees the promise in the drug, paying $2.1bn upfront to take control of the CAR-T therapy alongside other preclinical programmes and the RNA payload-delivering technology used to create them.
CPTX2309, being developed for the treatment of B-cell-mediated autoimmune diseases, is already being evaluated in a Phase I study (NCT06917742) with healthy volunteers. A preliminary look at the data from Capstan has revealed strong B-cell depletion – the aim of the treatment is to achieve an ‘immune reset’ by repopulation of healthy B cells.
Investors shared positive sentiment in the acquisition, with shares in NYSE-listed AbbVie closing 1.7% higher at $185.62 on 30 June, the day the announcement was made. The big pharma has a market cap of $327.9bn.
This is not the first in vivo CAR-T relationship that AbbVie has fostered, with a collaboration with Umoja Biopharma in January 2024. This partnership allows AbbVie to develop in-situ generated CAR-T cell therapy candidates in oncology using Umoja’s VivoVecplatform.
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By GlobalData“High-risk, high-reward” potential, says analysts
William Blair analyst Matt Phipps said in a research note: “While CPTX2309 is still in early clinical development, we believe the acquisition shows a strategic effort by AbbVie to further strengthen its immunology franchise through novel, disease-modifying mechanisms.
“Given the stage of development, this asset clearly comes with clinical risk, but given the potential of in vivo CAR-T, which does not require lymphodepletion and has potential for greater manufacturing scalability, it offers significant long-term upside if successful.”
Phipps, who described AbbVie’s new asset as “high-risk, high-reward,” said the purchase consolidates AbbVie’s strong trading. The big pharma company has already shrugged off the loss of market exclusivity for its blockbuster Humira (adalimumab) by rolling out Skyrizi (risankizumab) and Rinvoq (upadacitinib).
According to William Blair, forecast revenue rate from 2024 to 2029 growth rate for AbbVie trails only Eli Lilly and Sanofi, representing an “attractive opportunity” for long-term investors.
Capstan’s CEO Laura Shawver said: “In vivo CAR-T represents a potential new treatment modality in medicine – embodying the transformative power of cell therapy with the accessibility and scalability of an off-the-shelf biologic. This technology has the potential to become a first-in-class platform to treat a wide range of autoimmune diseases.”
Interius BioTherapeutics and Umoja Biopharma are two biotechs in the in vivo CAR-T arena that have assets in clinical trials targeting oncological indications. These assets also use lentiviral vectors to generate the cells in vivo, whereas Capstan is using mRNA. CPTX2309 is built on Capstan’s targeted LNP platform to enable in vivo delivery of RNA payloads to target cells. CPTX2309 is made up of an anti-CD19 CAR mRNA payload inside an LNP.
AbbVie’s purchase comes just a few days after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed an access barrier for currently approved CAR-T therapies, regarded as a boost to the sector’s outlook.
Cell & Gene Therapy coverage on Pharmaceutical Technology is supported by Cytiva.
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