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AbbVie (ABBV-0.22%) announced Monday that it is buying Aliada Therapeutics for $1.4 billion. The deal includes Aliada’s lead drug candidate ALIA-1758, an experimental antibody being tested for treating Alzheimer’s disease.
The pharma giant said the move is part of its strategy to strengthen its neuroscience pipeline. Earlier this year, AbbVie halted development on its own Alzheimer’s treatment as a standalone therapy.
“Neuroscience is one of our key growth areas and we are committed to driving innovation in this field to address critical unmet needs for patients living with seriously debilitating neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease,” said AbbVie chief scientific officer Roopal Thakkar in a press release.
ALIA-1758 targets amyloid beta, a brain protein believed to be a cause of Alzheimer’s. The drug will also use make use of Aliada’s drug delivery technology, which helps move molecules across the blood-brain barrier for better efficacy.
“Many promising CNS-targeted [central nervous system] therapies fail to reach late-stage trials due to their inability to cross the blood-brain barrier,” Aliada chief medical officer Michael Ryan said in the release. “Our MODEL platform addresses this challenge directly, efficiently delivering targeted drugs and potentially transforming how we treat neurological diseases.”
The deal comes as the other pharma companies are working on their own new Alzheimer’s medications. Both Eli Lilly and Biogen have recently launched new Alzheimer’s drugs. Eli Lilly (LLY+2.06%) is also conducting a phase 3 clinical trial on another drug targeting amyloid beta.
Recent studies have also found that GLP-1 treatments, the class of diabetes and weight loss drugs that includes Novo Nordisk’s (NVO+0.02%) Ozempic and Wegovy, are linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer’s.
Novo Nordisk is currently conducting two clinical trials testing semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, to see if the drug has an effect on early Alzheimer’s disease.