Fourteen years ago, after issuing a hypothesis, professors Sophie Lucas and Pierre Coulie and their teams set about checking their theory in the hope of developing a drug candidate against cancer. Their wager paid off, as two months ago the company AbbVie announced that it had an exclusive global licence for this experimental drug candidate. This agreement could ultimately be worth up to 625 million dollars. 

AbbVie is an international biopharmaceutical company with a subsidiary in Wavre and a goal of targeting a series of major health problem around the world. So it had its reasons for taking an interest in the drug candidate developed in the laboratories of the Institut de Duve at the UC Louvain, in collaboration with Belgian biotechnology company argenx. This licence will allow AbbVie to continue the clinical development of this drug candidate, perhaps launching the first clinical tests on cancer patients and improving their quality of life.