Teva Shareholders Shrug Off Latest Collaborative Research Agreement

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd (ADR) (NYSE: TEVA) announced on Tuesday it has entered into a new collaborative research agreement with AbCellera, a privately held company that has developed a high-throughput platform for the rapid discovery of therapeutic antibodies directly from natural immune cells.

As part of the partnership, AbCellera will apply its high-throughput single cell antibody platform for the discovery of rare monoclonal antibodies.

Teva Pharmaceuticals will pay AbCellera an up-front fee, research payments and an undisclosed downstream milestone payment associated with the development and approval of therapeutic antibodies.

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Despite the new agreement, shares of Teva Pharmaceuticals were trading lower by 2.50 percent at $61.15 mid-Tuesday afternoon.

"We are pleased to work with AbCellera utilizing this company's novel biologics technology," said Michael Hayden, MD, PhD, president of global R&D and chief scientific officer at Teva. "This agreement will be complementary to our existing antibody discovery process with the potential to strengthen Teva's capabilities in novel biologics discovery."

"These are tough problems that need new technologies to move them forward. Our platform brings important advantages to enable the discovery of rare antibodies with defined specificity and functional activity against difficult membrane protein targets," said Dr. Carl Hansen, president and CEO of AbCellera. "We look forward to a close collaboration with the team of scientists at Teva, and are excited at the chance to help advance this important program."

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