US pharmaceutical company AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) confirmed on Tuesday that it has completed its acquisition of biotechnology company Capstan Therapeutics.

As a result, Capstan is now part of AbbVie.

Capstan's lead asset CPTX2309, currently in Phase 1 study for the treatment of B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases, is a tLNP that generates CD19-specific, CD8+ in vivo CAR-T cells. The CAR-T cells are designed to achieve rapid and deep B cell depletion with the aim of achieving durable, drug-free remission. This can be accomplished without the need for lymphodepleting chemotherapy, while also avoiding other challenges associated with conventional ex vivo CAR-T therapies.

"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," commented Jonathon Sedgwick, Ph.D., senior vice president and global head of discovery research at 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."