Alpine Immune Sciences and Ireland’s Horizon Therapeutics forged a licensing and collaborative research and development agreement valued at up to $1.5 billion to generate up to four preclinical candidates for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

Horizon will have exclusive rights to develop and commercialize the candidates from Seattle-based Alpine’s unique discovery platform. Overall, the collaboration and licensing agreement between the two cross-Atlantic companies includes a lead, potential first-in-class preclinical candidate, as well as a research collaboration to jointly develop the additional novel candidates.