AbbVie announced Monday it has agreed to acquire Apogee Therapeutics in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $10.9 billion, one of the largest biopharma transactions of 2026, as the North Chicago drugmaker moves to extend its immunology franchise beyond the aging Humira franchise.
Under terms disclosed in an 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 22, AbbVie will pay $135.11 per share for all outstanding Apogee stock — a premium of roughly 49 percent to Apogee’s closing price the prior day. Both companies’ boards of directors unanimously approved the transaction. Closing is expected in the third quarter of 2026, subject to customary conditions including Apogee shareholder approval and receipt of required regulatory clearances.
The acquisition’s centerpiece is zumilokibart (APG777), Apogee’s lead asset — a subcutaneous, half-life-extended monoclonal antibody targeting interleukin-13 (IL-13), a cytokine implicated in allergic inflammation. Zumilokibart is in late-stage clinical development for moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis and asthma. The drug’s engineered extended half-life is designed to allow maintenance dosing as infrequently as once every three to six months, a potential differentiator in a crowded inflammatory skin-disease market.
In atopic dermatitis, zumilokibart completed Part B of the Phase 2 APEX trial and met its primary endpoint. Apogee had announced plans to launch three Phase 3 trials — ADventure 1, ADventure 2, and ADventure TCS — in moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis in the second half of 2026. In asthma, an earlier-stage Phase 1b program generated interim data Apogee described as demonstrating rapid and durable suppression of fractional exhaled nitric oxide through 32 weeks. The Vital Record has not independently verified the underlying trial datasets for those efficacy figures.
Apogee’s pipeline also includes APG333 and APG273, additional clinical-stage candidates targeting inflammatory indications, though terms related to those programs were not separately disclosed.
“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,” AbbVie chief executive Robert Michael said in the announcement.
The acquisition underscores the pressure AbbVie faces to rebuild revenue as Humira, once the world’s best-selling drug, faces deepening biosimilar competition. According to AbbVie’s Q1 2026 earnings release (April 29, 2026), Humira net revenues fell 38.6 percent year-over-year to $688 million in the first quarter of 2026. Skyrizi and Rinvoq — AbbVie’s current immunology growth engines — posted combined global revenues of approximately $6.6 billion in Q1 2026 per the same earnings release, but the company has signaled that further pipeline depth is essential to sustaining long-term growth.
Termination fees and financing details were not prominently disclosed in materials reviewed for this report.
Correction — June 23, 2026: The original article cited Humira net revenues (−38.6% to $688M in Q1 2026) and combined Skyrizi/Rinvoq revenues (~$6.6B in Q1 2026) without identifying their source. Both figures are numerically accurate but come from AbbVie’s Q1 2026 earnings release (April 29, 2026), not from the acquisition 8-K or deal press release cited elsewhere in the story. The attribution has been corrected.