Gilead acquires Cell Design Labs to bolster CAR-T presence
Leading US biotech Gilead Sciences is to acquire privately-held Cell Design Labs in a structured buy out valued at to $567m, including the 12.2% shareholding it already holds as a result of its $12bn acquisition of Kite Pharmaceuticals earlier this year. The Kite deal propelled Gilead to the forefront of a new, high-profile field in pharmaceuticals called Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy, in which the patient’s own T-cells are engineered to seek and destroy cancer cells. CAR-T therapies are manufactured specifically for each individual patient in a procedure that takes around three weeks and has significant logistic issues. The procedures are, as a result, extremely expensive, costing up to $500,000 a time, but have achieved remarkable results in patients with advanced haematological cancers that have no other treatment options.
Gilead received its first US approval for its CAR-T therapy, Yescarta, in October for treatment of certain types of relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma. It was the second company to do so after Swiss group Novartis received a US regulatory OK for its CAR-T therapy Kymriah for a different indication a few months earlier. These two companies have pipeline of new indications under development for Yescarta and Kymriah and Gilead’s acquisition of Cell Design Labs – with which it had already been collaborating – provides a second-generation CAR-T product incorporating a so-called Throttle switch. Gilead is a core holding for Biotechnology Growth Trust BIOG and International Biotech Trust IBT , the UK’s two leading biotech specialist investment trusts, as well as Switzerland’s BB Biotech and HBM Global Biotechnology. The company has business focused on three areas: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection , HIV and cancer. Recently, the market for HCV has been falling – particularly in the US – as patients have been cured of the chronic infection, which has hit performance, but there is much excitement about the potential of CAR-T therapy.
GILD : Gilead acquires Cell Design Labs to bolster CAR-T presence