AbbVie signed an agreement to acquire Kestrel Therapeutics under an option structure valued at up to $1.45 billion, contingent on milestones tied to Kestrel’s oral pan-KRAS inhibitor KST-6051. The deal follows Kestrel’s report that dosing began in a Phase 1 trial in KRAS-driven solid tumors. AbbVie’s oncology leadership said the collaboration aims to explore broader KRAS mutations, distinguishing the approach from therapies historically focused on narrower KRAS subsets. The agreement includes funding for development of the KST-6051 program, though the reporting did not detail specific development or regulatory triggers. As companies race to build next-generation KRAS pipelines, the structure signals that AbbVie is trying to buy optionality early rather than relying only on internal discovery.