Biopharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences has been facing “increasing unrest” from shareholders recently, says Josh Nathan-Kazis in Barron’s. They have been asking what it plans to do with its “substantial” amount of cash. Now they have their answer. Gilead has decided to buy “small cancer-focused biotech” Forty Seven for $4.9bn. Gilead hopes that the deal, which has boosted Forty Seven’s shares by 62%, will add “significant potential” to its clinical pipeline, particularly in the field of immuno-oncology, where the emphasis is on using the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. One particularly promising drug by Forty Seven is magrolimab, designed to treat several cancers, including myelodysplastic syndrome (in which some blood cells in bone marrow do not mature properly and become unhealthy) and a form of leukaemia.
Gilead needed to do something, say Marthe Fourcade and Kristen Brown on Bloomberg. While Gilead’s hepatitis C franchise may have turned the company into a “drug-industry giant”, sales of the treatments have “slipped from their peak” and the firm “has struggled to find new streams of revenue”. The deal with Forty Seven complements its 2017 acquisition of Kite Pharma, bringing on board “an experimental therapy that has potential to be the first in its class”. If Gilead hadn’t jumped on Forty Seven a competitor would probably have snapped it up; “other potential suitors” had been eyeing it up.
Why cancer drugs are all the rage
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