AbbVie is making its biggest acquisition in years in a bid to expand its portfolio of autoimmune disease drugs, announcing on Monday plans to buy Apogee Therapeutics for nearly $11 billion. 

The pharmaceutical giant will pay $135.11 per share for Apogee, a roughly 49% premium to the biotechnology company’s closing price on Friday. The acquisition should close in the third quarter of 2026, pending approvals from shareholders and regulatory agencies. 

The Financial Times first reported news of a pending deal on Friday. 

The purchase is AbbVie’s largest since taking over Botox maker Allergan in a $63 billion deal in 2019. It also surpasses the company’s big-ticket buyouts of ImmunoGen and Cerevel Therapeutics in 2023, two deals AbbVie used to add medicines for cancer and neurological diseases. 

For the biotechnology sector, the buyout adds to a particularly active year for company purchases. So far, 32 deals have been struck with at least $50 million in guaranteed upfront payments. Around two thirds of those deals have been worth at least $1 billion and six have eclipsed $5 billion. Both totals are on pace to surpass what’s been seen in every year since at least 2020, according to BioPharma Dive data. 

In acquiring Apogee, AbbVie is adding to an armamentarium of inflammatory disease medicines that has long been its core focus. That portfolio was long led by Humira, which made more than $200 billion for AbbVie before going off-patent, and now includes newer drugs like Skyrizi and Rinvoq that are used to treat conditions such as psoriasis, Crohn’s disease and eczema.

Apogee’s top drug, zumilokibart, is being positioned as a competitor to widely used antibody-based drugs for eczema and asthma, such as Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ Dupixent. Whereas Dupixent is injected every two weeks, zumilokibart offers the potential for anywhere from two to four injections per year. It also works slightly differently than Dupixent, precisely binding to the inflammatory cytokine IL-13 rather than a receptor shared by IL-13 and a different signaling protein. 

The result is a drug that might be more potent and convenient than other injections. In its statement, AbbVie noted how a large majority of people with atopic dermatitis still don’t see both relief from itching, as well as improvements in skin clearance. Phase 2 testing showed that about two-thirds of treatment recipients had “significant” skin clearance after 16 weeks, along with “notable improvements” in itching. Those findings, along with a safety profile that’s consistent with other, similar medications, support zumilokibart’s “best-in-class” profile, AbbVie said. Phase 3 testing had been expected to start later this year. 

Apogee has a pipeline of other longer-lasting immune drugs in earlier testing as well. One, APG273, combines zumilokibart with another antibody that blocks a signaling protein, TSLP, implicated in lung inflammation. Early data suggest that it could be useful in treating asthma and injected either quarterly or twice per year. 

“Apogee's pipeline adds highly differentiated clinical-stage assets, further expanding our robust immunology portfolio in areas of significant patient need, including atopic dermatitis and asthma,” said AbbVie CEO Robert Michael, in a statement. 

For Apogee, the buyout is an “ideal and sensible outcome,” but comes “earlier than we would have expected,” wrote RBC Capital Markets analyst Brian Abrahams. To Abrahams, it “remains possible” that other suitors could come forward, as zumilokibart might be a fit for “many other large pharma players,” such as Sanofi or Johnson & Johnson. 

AbbVie, though, could maximize the drug’s potential to achieve “mega-blockbuster status,” Stifel analyst Alex Thompson added in a separate note. AbbVie is a “natural acquirer” for Apogee and buying the company now could minimize the royalty payments owed by Apogee to Blackstone Life Sciences under a recent financing deal, he wrote. 

Apogee is one of several immune disease-focused spinouts of antibody drug specialist Paragon Therapeutics. A few others, among them Spyre Therapeutics and Oruka Therapeutics, are now publicly traded and worth billions of dollars.