Good Essay On New Product Pipeline

Investment

Gilead Sciences has added yet another blockbuster drug to its portfolio for treatment of liver diseases. The company on January 10th, 2015 announced an acquisition of Phenex Pharmaceuticals AG, a privately-held biotechnology company. As per the agreement, Gilead Sciences will acquire Phenex’s Farnesoid X Receptor (FXR) program comprising small molecule FXR agonists for the treatment of liver diseases including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), and will pay Phenex an upfront payment plus additional payments based upon achievement of certain development milestones that may potentially be worth up to $470 million (Fransico, 2014).
As per the market pundits, the acquisition will largely benefit Gilead as presently there are no approved therapies for the treatment of NASH disease that is expected to affect 10-20% of the developed world population in the coming future. In America alone, this chronic liver disease affects 2-5% of the population and is third leading cause of liver transplant in the country. Hence, developing a drug against NASH represents a market large enough to create the potential for another blockbuster drug and will also assure significant jump in revenue for Gilead Sciences.
Apart from developing drug against NASH, the company is also testing Fixed-Dose Combination of sofosbuvir and GS-5816 that targets HCV infection. In addition, the company has whole gems in the pipeline in its HIV portfolio. As discussed in the previous section also, the company has filed application with USFDA for approval of drug, Elvitegravir and cobicistat, that treats HIV-1 infections in the adults with a single tablet regiment on daily basis. If approved, this drug will be a revolution for the medical industry and also for HIV patients. Apart from this, phase-3 trial is being conducted for Idelalisib, the drug that targets blood cancer cells, iNHL and CLL.

Works Cited

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