I-Mab, ABL Bio Enter License Agreement

I-Mab Biopharma and ABL Bio Corporation have entered into a strategic partnering agreement for ABL Bio to in-license the global rights excluding Greater China to I-Mab’s bispecific antibodies (BsAb) of undisclosed target with licensing payments of approximately $100 million in total. The two companies also agreed on a collaboration to co-develop additional BsAbs as part of the partnership. 
 

Under the terms of the agreement, ABL Bio will pay $2.5 million in upfront payment. I-Mab will also receive research & development, regulatory and sales-based milestone payments, which could result in aggregate payments of $100 million from ABL Bio. In addition, ABL Bio will pay tiered royalties on net sales. The partnership also includes three more collaborative bi-specific antibody projects. I-Mab and ABL Bio will share the development cost as well as rights in China, South Korea and rest of the world in different configurations. 

“This partnership with ABL Bio is a latest addition to our growing portfolio of global partnerships spanning from early stage projects to clinical assets. We are very pleased to work with ABL Bio for their cutting-edge discovery and antibody engineering platform for novel therapeutic antibodies,” said Jingwu Zang, the founder and chief executive officer of I-Mab. “Bi-specific antibody truly represents the next wave biologics in cancer immunotherapy for its unique modality to create target synergy,” 

“We are very excited about our partnership with I-Mab to develop First-in-Class and Best-in-Class BsAbs and our collaboration will accelerate the development of innovative immunotherapy,” said Sang Hoon Lee, the founder and chief executive officer of ABL Bio. “We look forward to a productive and successful partnership since I-Mab is a leader in the immunology field. Because of the strong synergies between both companies, we believe this collaboration will provide a great example for our industry.”