12:45 PM EDT, 10/28/2024 (MT Newswires) -- AbbVie ( ABBV ) announced an agreement to buy Aliada Therapeutics and its Alzheimer's disease candidate for $1.4 billion in cash to boost its neuroscience portfolio.

The pharmaceutical company will gain access to Aliada's lead investigational asset, ALIA-1758, which is an anti-pyroglutamate amyloid beta antibody being developed as a treatment for Alzheimer's. Shares of AbbVie ( ABBV ) were up 1% in midday trade.

"This acquisition immediately positions us to advance ALIA-1758, a potentially best-in-class disease-modifying therapy for Alzheimer's disease," AbbVie ( ABBV ) Chief Scientific Officer Roopal Thakkar said in a statement. The investigational treatment is currently in a phase 1 clinical trial.

Aliada's blood-brain barrier-crossing technology will help AbbVie ( ABBV ) accelerate the development of therapies for neurological disorders, according to Thakkar.

"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," he said.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year, subject to regulatory approvals. AbbVie ( ABBV ) is scheduled to report third-quarter results on Wednesday.

Earlier this year, AbbVie ( ABBV ) discontinued further development of its ABBV-916 monoclonal antibody as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. Following a phase 2 clinical trial, the company determined that it wouldn't have been "sufficiently differentiated from other emerging therapies," Thakkar told analysts on a second-quarter earnings call in July, according to a Capital IQ transcript.

Aliada's MODEL platform enabled the development of ALIA-1758 and is a "promising step forward in brain delivery of an anti-amyloid antibody therapy," Aliada Chief Medical Officer Michael Ryan said in a statement on Monday. "Many promising CNS-targeted therapies fail to reach late-stage trials due to their inability to cross the blood-brain barrier. Our MODEL platform addresses this challenge directly."

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