AbbVie To Beef Up Neurology Pipeline With Option To Add Parkinson's Candidate

AbbVie Inc (NYSE: ABBV) has landed an option to buy Mitokinin upon completing IND-enabling studies on the latter's lead PINK1 compound for Parkinson's disease.
Mitokinin's novel PINK1 compounds selectively increase the activity of PINK1, a master regulator of mitochondrial quality control that is genetically linked to Parkinson's disease.
Mitokinin is based on technology discovered by Nicholas Hertz, Ph.D., and Kevan Shokat, Ph.D., at the University of California, San Francisco.
Now, AbbVie has signed up to help Mitokinin get to the next stage in its evolution. In return for the option to buy Mitokinin, AbbVie is making an upfront payment.
Price Action: ABBV shares are up 0.1% at $108.5 in market trading hours on the last check Tuesday.