Boehringer Ingelheim struck a multi-part agreement with Shanghai-based Simcere to acquire rights to a preclinical TL1A×IL‑23p19 bispecific for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The deal includes a €42 million upfront payment for the asset and commercial options that could push total consideration to roughly €1.05 billion. Simcere will supply the preclinical bispecific and Boehringer will fund further development and commercialization. The transaction signals Big Pharma urgency to expand in IBD by combining cytokine targets; TL1A and IL‑23 are both implicated in gut inflammation and fibrosis. This deal transfers early-stage risk to Boehringer while giving Simcere capital and validation to advance its pipeline. For drug developers, the structure—modest upfront, large contingent milestones—reflects the market’s willingness to pay premium exit prices for differentiated biologics in hot immunology niches. Clarification: a bispecific antibody is a biologic engineered to bind two distinct targets simultaneously, here TL1A and IL‑23p19, aiming to modulate two disease pathways at once.