SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., and BOSTON – Frontier Medicines Corporation, a precision medicine company seeking to unlock the proteome to advance breakthroughs against otherwise undruggable disease-causing targets, today announced the second and third programs under the company’s global partnership with AbbVie have advanced into lead generation. These programs harness novel E3 Ligases for targeted protein degradation, through the discovery of small molecules from The Frontier^TM Platform.

“Our collaboration with Frontier is continuing to make progress against difficult-to-drug protein targets” said Jonathon Sedgwick, Ph.D., vice president and global head, Discovery Research, AbbVie. “Two years into our partnership, Frontier’s technology is showing important advances in the drugging of previously inaccessible biology, this time towards enabling binders for novel E3 ligases, with the potential to be applied to the discovery and development of new and better therapeutic options for patients.”

Started in 2020, the objective of the global partnership is to discover, develop, and commercialize a pipeline of innovative small molecule therapeutics against certain high-interest, difficult-to-drug protein targets.  

“We are excited that our team’s work, with support from AbbVie, has resulted in accessing two previously undruggable E3 Ligases for targeted protein degradation, and each program has the potential to drive new therapeutic opportunities for patients,” said Chris Varma, Ph.D., Frontier’s co-founder, chairman, and CEO. “Our delivery of three programs into lead generation further validates The Frontier™ Platform’s ability to systematically discover and deliver small molecules to drug undruggable targets. We look forward to progressing these novel breakthrough discoveries to help advance transformative care for patients.”   

About Frontier and AbbVie Partnership 

Under the partnership, the companies will collaborate on the research and pre-clinical development of programs directed to novel E3 ligases, and certain immunology and oncology targets. AbbVie will reimburse Frontier’s R&D costs through defined stages of pre-clinical development. Upon successful completion, AbbVie will assume full responsibility for global development and commercialization activities and costs for the programs. Frontier will retain an option to share development activities and expenses for certain oncology programs through the completion of Phase 2. Frontier will be eligible to receive success-based development and commercial milestone payments that could potentially exceed $1 billion, in addition to royalty payments on commercialized products. AbbVie retains the right to expand the collaboration in the future by exercising options to a defined number of additional targets. The collaboration excludes all of Frontier’s internal programs for which Frontier retains exclusive global rights. 

About Frontier Medicines 

Frontier Medicines is a precision medicine company that has pioneered a powerful drug discovery engine, The Frontier™ Platform, designed to generate medicines against disease-causing proteins previously considered undruggable. The company is deploying its technologies in chemoproteomics, covalent drug discovery, and machine learning to potentially develop groundbreaking medicines for genetically-defined patient populations, starting in cancer. Frontier is advancing its wholly-owned pipeline of precision medicines against the most important drivers of cancer. The company’s lead program directly inhibits both the activated and inactive forms of KRAS^G12C. For more information on how Frontier is boldly advancing science to defeat disease, visit www.frontiermeds.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About AbbVie 
AbbVie’s mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people’s lives across several key therapeutic areas: immunology, oncology, neuroscience, eye care, virology, women’s health and gastroenterology, in addition to products and services across its Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.