AbbVie Inc. (ABBV, Financial) Â and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine will conduct exploration, experimentation and discovery activities related to studying cancer, according to a five-year collaboration agreement.
The worldwide biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Lake Bluff, Illinois, and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, located in Baltimore, announced through PR Newswire yesterday that the agreement encompasses the goal of targeting disparate fields of cancer research, including lung carcinoma, bowel cancer, breast, prostate and blood tumors.
Following this agreement, the physicians and scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine will have the opportunity to delve into innovative therapies that have been advanced by AbbVie during nonclinical studies.
The agreement will also be an opportunity to exchange scientific expertise between the two parties' teams of physicians and scientists.
The exchange of scientific expertise will be essential for the two teams as they work together to study oncology medicine and develop innovative therapies to more accurately target and fight cancer.
"The importance of cancer research is critical to developing new therapies that could have life-changing implications," said William Nelson, M.D., Ph.D., director, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. "Opportunities to advance science and further research help move us in a direction to yield positive outcomes."
The agreement provides AbbVie the privilege of marketing specific discoveries the Johns Hopkins team will make under conditions of exclusivity.
The two teams will work on projects submitted by a committee composed of representatives appointed by AbbVie and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The main task of this committee will be preparing and arranging the projects.
AbbVie and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine say that their physicians and scientists “will also participate in an annual symposium to discuss their joint research and evaluate potential new projects.”
Yesterday, AbbVie closed at $60.86, up $1.43 (or 2.41%) from the previous close. A volume of 10,227,657 shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange versus an average of 8.93 million shares traded over the last 10 trading days and an average of 7.57 million shares traded over the last three months.
At the moment, AbbVie has a market capitalization of $99.05 billion and approximately 1.63 billion shares outstanding, of which 0.10% are held by insiders and 73.60% are held by institutions.
The volume of shares freely traded on the New York Stock Exchange is 1.62 billion.
According to current market prices, AbbVie is trading at 15.31 times its book value per share (mrq) and 11.27 times its EBITDA.
Most analysts suggest to hold the stock and the average target price is $69.75.
NWQ Managers (Trades, Portfolio), Joel Greenblatt (Trades, Portfolio), David Dreman (Trades, Portfolio), Mario Gabelli (Trades, Portfolio) and Ken Fisher (Trades, Portfolio) reduced their positions in AbbVie by 73.90%, 24.43%, 5.52%, 42.78% and 1.35%.
Disclosure: I have no positions in AbbVie.
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