By Colin Kellaher 



  AbbVie Inc. and Genmab A/S on Wednesday said they will jointly develop and commercialize three of Genmab's early-stage investigational bispecific antibody product candidates and form a discovery research collaboration for future differentiated antibody therapeutics for cancer. 


  AbbVie, a North Chicago, Ill., biopharmaceutical company, will make a $750 million upfront payment to Genmab under the agreement, the companies said. 


  The Copenhagen biotechnology company also is eligible to receive up to $3.15 billion in additional development, regulatory and sales milestone payments. 


  The companies said they will work to develop Genmab's next-generation bispecific antibody programs, including epcoritamab. The discovery collaboration will combine proprietary antibodies from both companies, along with Genmab's DuoBody technology and AbbVie's payload and ADC technology, to select and develop up to four additional product candidates, Genmab and AbbVie added. 


  Genmab's European-listed shares were recently up 3.6% to DKK1,946. 


  Write to Colin Kellaher at colin.kellaher@wsj.com