Epcoritamab

Iambic's technology is intended to complement the expertise of AbbVie's existing discovery teams rather than operate independently of them. Credit: AbbVie Nicholas Donoghoe, AbbVie’s Chief Business and Strategy Officer, believes that Iambic’s AI’s capabilities can spur innovation across the organisation AI drug discovery is one of the most talked-about technological developments in the pharmaceutical sector, with the industry’s largest players partnering with both up-and-coming biotech startups and established tech players as they seek to expedite the identification and design of future medicines. In the latest example of this trend, AbbVie has partnered with Iambic , a biotech backed by Nvidia and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, on a multi-year collaboration to accelerate small-molecule drug discovery and development. The partnership will focus on programmes across immunology, neuroscience and oncology, with the companies targeting potential first-in-class and best-in-class medicines. Iambic also announced that it would file for a US IPO, and plans to use the funds raised to progress three oncology drugs in the early stages of development. Thomas Miller, CEO and Co-Founder of Iambic. Credit: LinkedIn Following the announcement, Iambic CEO and Co-Founder Thomas Miller writes on LinkedIn: “At Iambic, our mission is to make better technology for better medicines – in our own hands and with partners. That’s why we are incredibly proud to announce a new, multi-year collaboration with global pharmaceutical leader AbbVie. “Together we will apply Iambic’s molecular superintelligence platform toward the discovery of small-molecule programmes with first-in-class and best-in-class potential across therapeutic areas of immunology, neuroscience and oncology.” “ We will apply Iambic’s molecular superintelligence platform toward the discovery of small-molecule programmes with first-in-class and best-in-class potential. ” Thomas Miller CEO and Co-Founder at Iambic Applying AI to molecular design At the centre of the partnership is Iambic's molecular superintelligence platform, which combines its Enchant and NeuralPLexer technologies. The platform is designed to address one of the fundamental challenges of small-molecule drug discovery: evaluating and optimising multiple properties of a potential drug candidate at the same time. Often, scientists will assess a wide range of molecular characteristics individually as they identify and refine potential candidates. Iambic says its platform is designed to optimise these properties simultaneously, helping researchers make more precise decisions about which molecules to pursue. The partnership will specifically use Enchant v3, Iambic's next-generation multimodal transformer model that was launched on the same day as the AbbVie partnership announcement. Iambic's Enchant v3 41 billion parameters – enabling greater reasoning complexity. 4.5 trillion tokens – used to pretrain the next-generation model. 6,000+ molecular properties – supporting multi-parameter optimisation. 16 biomedical modalities – spanning text, assay data, molecular and protein structures, imaging, multi-omics, biologics, clinical trials and pharmacokinetics. Predictable scaling laws – linking increased model scale with improved prediction accuracy across preclinical and clinical endpoints. The model brings together biomedical data modalities from across the drug discovery process and is designed to allow multiple drug design hypotheses to be tested in parallel and at scale. According to Iambic, Enchant v3 is trained on more than 6,000 molecular properties and is designed to improve prediction accuracy across drug discovery and development. For AbbVie, the technology is intended to complement the expertise of its existing discovery teams rather than operate independently of them. Nicholas Donoghoe, Executive Vice President and Chief Business and Strategy Officer at AbbVie. Credit: LinkedIn "We are excited about the purpose-built AI capabilities Iambic is bringing to our Discovery scientists," says Nicholas Donoghoe, Executive Vice President and Chief Business and Strategy Officer at AbbVie. "We believe AI will be a powerful catalyst for scientific innovation across AbbVie. By equipping our teams with fit-for-purpose AI solutions, we can accelerate discovery, expand what is possible in R&D and significantly advance our commitment to making a remarkable impact for patients," he continues. Improving the probability of success The pharmaceutical industry has invested heavily in AI as researchers seek to improve the efficiency of a traditionally lengthy and costly drug development process. For AbbVie, the Iambic collaboration will focus on using AI to inform decisions about which molecules progress through discovery. Jonathon Sedgwick, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Discovery Research at AbbVie. Credit: LinkedIn "Combining Iambic's platform with the drug-hunting expertise of AbbVie scientists can help us make more precise decisions about the molecules we pursue," says Jonathon Sedgwick, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Discovery Research at AbbVie. "The goal of our collaboration with Iambic is to design better molecules more efficiently and improve our probability of success, ultimately to deliver breakthrough medicines for patients sooner." The companies will apply the technology across three therapeutic areas, giving the collaboration a broad remit spanning immunology, neuroscience and oncology. From AI platform to clinical-stage programmes The collaboration also builds on Iambic's progress in taking AI-enabled drug discovery beyond computational modelling and towards clinical development. The company's wholly owned programme IAM1363, an investigational therapy targeting HER2-driven cancers, has entered Phase 1 clinical development. Iambic reported preliminary anti-tumour activity and differentiated tolerability for IAM1363 in Phase 1 data presented at ESMO 2025. These early findings provide clinical context for the company's broader ambition to use its technology platform to generate new drug candidates. AbbVie - key partners Genmab CEO: Dr Jan van de Winkel | HQ: Copenhagen, Denmark Genmab is a Danish biotech company focused on developing antibody medicines for cancer and other serious diseases. Its long-running partnership with AbbVie has centred on next-generation bispecific antibodies, including epcoritamab, which is marketed as Epkinly in the US. The companies have also collaborated on additional oncology programmes, combining Genmab’s antibody technology with AbbVie’s development and commercial capabilities. Neomorph CEO: Philip Chamberlain | HQ: San Diego, California Neomorph is a US biotechnology company developing molecular glue degraders designed to target previously difficult-to-drug proteins. AbbVie and Neomorph announced a collaboration in January 2025 to discover and develop molecular glue degraders across oncology and immunology. The partnership combines Neomorph’s molecular glue discovery platform with AbbVie’s drug development expertise and therapeutic-area capabilities. Company portals AbbVie Iambic Therapeutics Executives Jonathon Sedgwick Senior Vice President and Global Head, Discovery Research Nicholas Donoghoe Executive Vice President, Chief Business and Strategy Officer Thomas Miller Co-founder and CEO

Roche’s T-cell engager portfolio has notched another milestone, as a phase 3 trial of the company’s Lunsumio met its primary endpoint in earlier-line follicular lymphoma. Without sharing any specific data, Roche and its subsidiary Genentech said Lunsumio’s combination with lenalidomide (Revlimid) demonstrated a statistically and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival against rituximab (Rituxan) plus lenalidomide, known as R2, in the phase 3 Celestimo study. The trial enrolled follicular lymphoma (FL) patients who have received at least one prior line of treatment, and it serves as the confirmatory study required to convert Lunsumio’s existing accelerated approval as a monotherapy in third-line FL into a full approval, while also potentially moving the drug earlier into the second-line setting. Besides the positive PFS readout, Roche said overall survival data were immature but did not offer any further description. No new safety signals were identified beyond the known profile of each drug, the company added. Detailed data could help doctors and industry watchers understand the Lunsumio doublet’s position against Incyte’s Monjuvi and AbbVie and Genmab’s Epkinly , both of which won FDA approvals for second-line FL last year in three-drug regimens with R2. An in-class competitor to Lunsumio, Epkinly, used on top of R2, reduced second-line-plus patients’ risk of disease progression or death by 79% versus R2 alone, the phase 3 Epcore FL-1 trial showed. For its part, the addition of Monjuvi to R2 improved PFS 57% among second-line-plus patients in the phase 3 inMind trial. Both Lunsumio and Epkinly are CD20xCD3 T-cell engagers, while Monjuvi is an anti-CD19 antibody. The new Celestimo results “indicate that a two-drug outpatient Lunsumio regimen may offer these patients an effective new option earlier in their treatment journey,” Levi Garraway, M.D., Ph.D., Roche’s chief medical officer and head of global product development, said in a statement. In addition to the three antibody drugs, Gilead Sciences’ CD19 CAR-T, Yescarta, is being tested in the phase 3 Zuma-22 trial in second-line-plus FL. At the same time, BeOne Medicines is combining its small-molecule BTK inhibitor Brukinsa with Roche’s CD20 antibody Gazyva in the phase 3 Mahogany trial in previously treated FL and marginal zone lymphoma. Roche is targeting its CD20xCD3 portfolio across B-cell malignancies. The Swiss pharma’s combination of Lunsumio and its antibody-drug conjugate Polivy is awaiting an FDA decision in second-line diffuse-large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) by Feb. 9, 2027. Meanwhile, all eyes are on an upcoming readout from Roche’s Skyglo trial for the company’s other CD20xCD3 bispecific, Columvi, in first-line DLBCL. Lunsumio was also recently moved outside blood cancers and into a phase 1 systemic lupus erythematosus trial.