Genentech has long shown it could not only play the big pharma role when it came to forging alliances with smaller companies looking for the expertise to advance products through the pipeline, but that it could do it better than big pharma competitors.

Yet the deal the South San Francisco, California-based biotech giant unveiled with Abbott this week focused on a pair of compelling compounds to treat various cancers shows that some big pharmas are among those that believe Genentech is the go-to partner on cancer.

The Abbott Park, Illinois pharmaceutical is far from being a scrappy biotech. With an $83.1-billion market cap, its edges past Genentech's $78.9 billion valuation. With 2006 sales of $22.5 billion and more than 66,000 employees, it's got two and a half times the revenue and six times the staff of Genentech. Nevertheless, Genentech went calling on Abbott, which was not actively searching for a partner for its cancer compounds, and convinced the company it would be better off forming an alliance with it to develop the drugs rather than go it alone.

"It's all about matchmaking and this is truly a perfect match," said Catherine Bryan, a spokeswoman for Abbott. "There's some extremely complimentary science in both of these areas at these companies."

For Genentech, the deal gives the company access to what it believes are best-in-class compounds that provide a new approach to treating cancer, furthers its efforts to build out its small molecule pipeline and gives it access to new medicinal chemistry expertise. For Abbott, which has no oncology products on the market, the deal gives a depth of development and regulatory expertise on advancing cancer therapies and getting them successfully through the regulatory process to market.

"It's intriguing," said John McCamant, editor of the Medical Technology Stock Letter. "The first question you ask: 'Abbott is not big in cancer, but why are they giving half of the rights away to Genentech? Why are they partnering this?' I believe it has to do with the capacity and capability to pick the right targets and run the trials. The bottom line is they are the ones who can get cancer drugs approved better than anybody else."

Abbott and Genentech will work together to research, develop and commercialize two investigational cancer compounds discovered by Abbott scientists. The companies will co-promote any resulting products in the United States and Abbott will promote the products outside of the United States.

Unique Cancer Approaches
Both of the compounds are targeted therapies that represent unique approaches to treating cancer. Both compounds are in early-stage clinical testing for a variety of tumor types. The first, ABT-263, is a so-called Bcl-2 family protein antagonist. It restores in cancer cells apoptosis, a natural process by which damaged or unwanted cells die and are cleared from the body.

"This is an area of biology that was of intense interest to us. We had some level of activity, but the folks at Abbott had been working on this for quite a while," said Joe McCracken, vice president of business development for Genentech. "As we scanned other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, we thought they have the leading program. The targets in this family have been intractable to drug discovery."

McCracken said their initial reaction was, "'Why would we do that?'" But Genentech showed up Abbott with their "best and brightest people" and gave a capabilities presentation that was intended to essentially make a case as to why this program in a collaboration with Genentech and Abbott could be more valuable to Abbott working on this project themselves. "They certainly weren't out looking for a partner," he said.

Genentech was not only successful in making their case, but Abbott then suggested expanding the talks to include another family of compounds, the lead of which was ABT-869, part of a class of drugs of growing interest to Genentech. ABT-869, is a VEGFR-based multi-targeted kinase inhibitor. It suppresses tumor growth by preventing the formation of new blood vessels that supply the tumor with oxygen and nutrients by inhibiting key angiogenesis.

"It was a very competitive area and one where we thought by working with Abbott in the 869 area we had a chance to develop best in class molecules in this particular therapeutic category, whereas working by ourselves we had concluded it was too late for us to start a project de novo," said McCracken.

More Collaborations Possible
Beyond those two compounds, scientists at the two companies will also conduct additional follow-on research in the area of Bcl-2 family protein antagonists and VEGFR-targeted kinase inhibitors.

McCracken said he'd like to do more collaborations like the one with Abbott. While he said its fun to work with small, upstart companies that are entrepreneurial and fast moving, he said Abbott brings unique capabilities a small company could not have. "I can't say whether it's going to be a trend," he said.

Whether it is or not, clearly this one is more than just another notch on Genentech's business development bedpost.