27 Facts About Gilead Sciences

Gilead Sciences held its IPO in 1992, and successfully developed drugs like Tamiflu and Vistide that decade.

In June 1987, Gilead Sciences was originally founded under the name Oligogen by Michael L Riordan, a medical doctor.

Gilead Sciences had first heard of the Balm of Gilead when he read Lanford Wilson's play Balm in Gilead while in medical school, then learned that naturally occurring acetylsalicylic acid had been found in modern times in a willow tree species from that part of that world, and was therefore inspired to name his company Gilead.

Riordan later recalled that Gilead Sciences's first decade as a startup was an extremely stressful experience for him, as a young venture capitalist serving for the first time as the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of his own biotech company.

In June 1996, Gilead Sciences launched Vistide for the treatment of cytomegalovirus retinitis in patients with AIDS.

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In March 1999, Gilead Sciences acquired NeXstar Pharmaceuticals of Boulder, Colorado.

Tamiflu was originally discovered by Gilead Sciences and licensed to Roche for late-phase development and marketing.

One reason for entering into the Tamiflu licensing agreement was that with only 350 employees, Gilead Sciences still did not yet have the capability to sell its drugs directly to overseas buyers.

In 2002, Gilead Sciences changed its corporate strategy to focus exclusively on antivirals, and sold its cancer assets to OSI Pharmaceuticals for $200 million.

However, even as Gilead Sciences developed its ability to distribute and sell its own drugs, it remained distinct from most pharmaceutical companies in terms of its strong reliance on subcontracting most of its manufacturing to contract manufacturing organizations.

Later that year, Gilead Sciences made its most important acquisition – and by then most expensive – with the purchase of Pharmasset, Inc This transaction helped cement Gilead Sciences as the leader in treatment of the hepatitis C virus by giving it control of sofosbuvir.

In October 2011, Gilead Sciences broke ground on a massive multi-year expansion of its 17-building headquarters campus in Foster City.

In September 2020, Gilead Sciences announced it had reached a deal to acquire Immunomedics for $21 billion, gaining control of the cancer treatment Trodelvy – a first-in-class Trop-2 antibody-drug conjugate.

In January 2022, Gilead Sciences pulled its cancer drug Zydelig from its accelerated approval in relapsed follicular B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma and relapsed small lymphocytic leukemia.

For poorer countries, Gilead Sciences licensed multiple companies to produce generic versions of Sovaldi; in India, a pill's price was as low as $4.

Gilead Sciences later combined Sovaldi with other antivirals in single-pill combinations.

Gilead Sciences's shares traded at over $70 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at US$93.

Gilead Sciences benefited from the expansion of Medicaid in the ACA; Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges wrote that Gilead Sciences's HIV drugs could face funding pressure under reform proposals.

Plaintiffs allege that Gilead Sciences suspended TAF in 2004 despite clear evidence indicating that TAF-based medications were safer than TDF, a compound whose long-term use was associated with adverse side effects such as nephrotoxicity and bone density loss.

Lawsuits allege that in the interim period, many HIV patients who continuously took Gilead Sciences's older TDF-based drugs suffered severe side effects, including nephrotoxicity.

The committee's investigation, based in part on internal documents obtained from Gilead Sciences, revealed that the company had considered prices ranging from $50,000 to $115,000 per year, trying to strike a balance between revenue and predicted activist and public relations blowback, with little regard to research and development costs.

In May 2019, Gilead Sciences announced it would donate enough Truvada to treat up to 200,000 patients annually for up to 11 years, the result of discussions with the Department of Health and Human Services under Trump.

In particular, Gilead Sciences sells intellectual property to an Irish subsidiary, which then sells the finished products, such as Sovaldi, in the United States and elsewhere, paying the low Irish tax rate on profits.

On December 26,2018, The Times reported that Gilead Sciences had used the Double Irish arrangement to avoid US corporate taxes on global profits, stating that the firm "used a controversial tax loophole arrangement to shift almost €20 billion in profits through an Irish entity in just two years" without paying Irish taxes.

Gilead Sciences repatriated a portion of the Irish subsidiary's holdings, $28 billion, to the United States in 2018 following reductions of the corporate tax rate.

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Gilead Sciences sought and obtained orphan drug designation for remdesivir from the US Food and Drug Administration on March 23,2020.

Gilead Sciences retains 20-year remdesivir patents in more than 70 countries.