Further to announcing an investment of $195 million in its North Chicago, Illinois manufacturing plant to expand domestic active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) production in the U.S.—part of its planned capital investment of more than $10 billion to support innovation and expand capabilities and scale over the next decade—AbbVie has acquired Capstan Therapeutics.
Construction will begin on the new North Chicago API facility in 2025, and it is expected to be fully operational by 2027, at which point it will expand AbbVie’s chemical synthesis capabilities in the U.S., supporting domestic production of current and next-generation neuroscience, immunology, and oncology medicines.
“Over the next decade, AbbVie will expand production of API, drug product, peptides and medical devices in the U.S. to support future medical breakthroughs,” said Robert A. Michael, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AbbVie. “This is an important step to maintain U.S. leadership in pharmaceutical innovation and deliver next-generation medicines that make a remarkable impact on patients’ lives.”
Additionally, the Capstan acquisition adds a potential first-in-class in vivo targeted lipid nanoparticle (tLNP) anti-CD19 CAR-T therapy candidate for B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases, in addition to a proprietary tLNP platform that can deliver RNA payloads that engineer specific cell types in vivo.
“With the acquisition now complete, we are excited to work together with the talented team at Capstan to advance our mission of transforming patient care,” said Jonathon Sedgwick, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Global Head of Discovery Research, AbbVie. “The addition of CPTX2309 and Capstan’s tLNP platform strengthens our ability to deliver new treatments aimed at resetting the immune system and enables application of Capstan’s proprietary technology more broadly for in vivo programming of cells.”
