AbbVie is paying up to $715 million to get into the pain game, inking a licensing deal with China’s Haisco Pharmaceutical Group that hands AbbVie rights to multiple compounds across pain-related indications.
The assets run from preclinical to Phase 1 testing in China. The comparable deal here: Eli Lilly bought SiteOne Therapeutics in May 2025 for up to $1 billion to get its hands on a NaV1.8 inhibitor pipeline, the same class of targets that powered Vertex’s Journavx approval last year. AbbVie won’t say which specific pain mechanisms it’s chasing, but Haisco has presented preclinical NaV1.8 data and also holds analgesic and non-controlled opioid compounds.
What does AbbVie actually get? Rights to an early-stage, multi-compound portfolio with no peak sales projections disclosed. The lead assets don’t even have Phase 2 data yet. That’s a lot of cash for a preclinical-to-Phase-1 bet.
For context, AbbVie isn’t new to expensive pipeline bets that go sideways. It paid $8.7 billion for Cerevel in 2023, and the key asset, emraclidine, has struggled in the clinic. The company also dropped $1.2 billion for Gilgamesh’s bretisilocin to get into psychedelics. Pain is its third billion-dollar neuroscience bet in three years.
Haisco, meanwhile, is moving fast on international licensing. The Chinese biotech licensed a COPD drug to AirNexis in January for $108 million upfront, with potential payments rising above $1 billion.
Neither AbbVie nor Haisco gave a deal close date.
Diana Kowalski