AbbVie: Humira's Patent Cliff and a $100 Billion Immunity Deal

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AbbVie was born in 2012 as a spinoff from Abbott Laboratories, its name joining Abbott with "vie," from the Latin for life. Its fortune rested on Humira, an injectable biologic for rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease and plaque psoriasis that was for years the best-selling prescription drug in the world and still brought in $9 billion, 16 percent of company revenue, in 2024. Because biologics are grown from living cells, rivals can only make biosimilars, and those arrived in January 2023. AbbVie prepared with in-house successors Skyrizi ($11.7 billion in 2024) and Rinvoq ($6 billion in 2023), then bought what it could not invent: Allergan and Botox for about $63 billion in 2019, ImmunoGen for $10.1 billion, Cerevel for $8.7 billion, Aliada Therapeutics for $1.4 billion, and a psychedelic depression candidate from Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals in a deal worth up to $1.2 billion.

A House Oversight and Reform Committee report accused AbbVie of building a patent thicket of overlapping patents around Humira and leaning on Orphan Drug Act protections to delay competition. The company paid $25 million in 2018 over kickback allegations involving the cholesterol drug Tricor and $24 million in 2020 over Humira nurse ambassadors, and in 2022 agreed to pay up to $2.37 billion to settle opioid marketing lawsuits tied to Allergan while denying wrongdoing. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, the Medicare price of its cancer drug Imbruvica was cut 38 percent by 2026. That January, AbbVie struck a direct deal with the Trump administration: $100 billion in U.S. investment over ten years and lower Medicaid prices, in exchange for exemptions from future tariffs and pricing mandates.

• A 2014 bid for Shire, structured as a tax inversion, died after the U.S. Treasury changed its rules, costing AbbVie a $1.6 billion breakup fee.
• Botox, acquired with Allergan, earned AbbVie $6 billion in 2024 and is used for chronic migraines and muscle spasms as well as wrinkles.
• A 2021 Senate Finance Committee inquiry found Humira patents housed in Bermuda: 75 percent of Humira sales were in the U.S., but only 1 percent of that income was reported for U.S. taxes.
• AbbVie and biosimilar maker Alvotech sued each other over Humira and settled out of court in 2022.
• The ImmunoGen purchase brought Elahere, an ovarian cancer drug that had already cleared the riskiest stages of clinical trials.