Frontier Medicines Corporation announced the first target for the development of a small molecule inhibitor is advancing into the lead generation phase under the company's global partnership with AbbVie. The global partnership was established in December 2020 to discover, develop, and commercialize a pipeline of innovative small molecule therapeutics against certain high-interest, difficult-to-drug protein targets. 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.