No matter how effective it is, a drug is worthless if the people who need it can’t afford it. That’s been almost an anthem for patients and policy wonks testifying before U.S. Congress on drug prices.
Modest revenue growth and a 2020 outlook that left analysts uninspired about its near-term prospects pushed Gilead Sciences Inc. shares (NASDAQ:GILD) down about 2% to close Feb. 5 at $65.87, despite growing sales of its HIV medicine, Biktarvy (bictegravir, emtricitabine and tenofovir alafenamide), and what CEO Daniel O'Day called "a sense of urgency" around further business development.
At this very early point in the emerging 2019-nCoV outbreak, knowledge about the virus is insufficient to predict what shape that outbreak will ultimately take. But knowledge about the virus is accumulating at remarkable speed, and experience with other viruses is helping to shape the response to the newest coronavirus threat. 2019-nCoV, sometimes called Wuhan coronavirus after its source, is the third coronavirus after SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV with the potential to cause serious illness and death that has emerged since the beginning of the 21st century.
BEIJING – China will kickstart a phase III trial Feb. 3 to determine whether patients with 2019-nCoV can be treated with Gilead Sciences Inc.’s NUC inhibitor, remdesivir, which was originally developed for Ebola, four days after a U.S. patient was said to have recovered by using the drug candidate.
BEIJING – China will kickstart a phase III trial Feb. 3 to determine whether patients with 2019-nCoV can be treated with Gilead Sciences Inc.’s NUC inhibitor, remdesivir, which was originally developed for Ebola, four days after a U.S. patient was said to have recovered by using the drug candidate.
Investors have grown accustomed to hearing news of major announcements from big pharma and blue chip biotech companies during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference week. However, as it turned out, headline catalysts were in short supply. In the absence of any major M&A deals taking place, the event turned out to be unusually muted.
Not only did newly emergent Kyverna Therapeutics Inc. burst out of the gate with a $25 million series A, but it enhanced its entrance with a deal from Gilead Sciences Inc., one of the company’s initial funders, potentially worth $587.5 million.
According to an analysis conducted by BioWorld of the third-quarter 2019 financial reports filed by the top 100 public biopharmaceutical companies ranked by market cap, and excluding big pharma companies, the amount that was invested in research and development (R&D) in the period increased almost 70% compared to the same period in 2018.
Bowing to congressional pressure, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Wednesday filed suit against Gilead Sciences Inc. for infringing government patents related to the use of HIV drugs Truvada and Descovy for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).
Gilead Sciences Inc.'s third-quarter earnings, though deemed satisfactory, brought lukewarm responses from Wall Street, with analysts such as J.P. Morgan's Cory Kasimov writing in a report that "these days the company's quarterly progress seems to take a back seat to how they [will] ultimately deploy their substantial amount of capital. The Galapagos deal notwithstanding, this feels like a long wait that's quite frankly getting a bit stale." Still reverberating is the arrangement this summer with Galapagos NV, of Mechelen, Belgium, which signed a 10-year research and development pact with Gilead under which Galapagos is getting $3.95 billion up front in hard cash plus another $1.1 billion in equity, in return for which Gilead will essentially have an option to ex-European rights on everything emanating from the firm's clinical and preclinical pipeline.
