March 25, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
FOSTER CITY, Calif. – Although Gilead Sciences is in the midst of a legal battle that could cost it about $3 billion, the Foster City-based company snapped up property in the San Francisco Bay area that could provide 800,000 square-feet of space in an expansion.
The San Francisco Business Times reported Gilead acquired 12 acres near its existing campus for about $120 million. The acquisition is confirmation of an expansion of Gilead’s physical facilities to support the company’s expanded pipeline of HIV/AIDS drugs and its blockbuster hepatitis C drugs Harvoni and Sovaldi.
The total land mass acquired is made of two parcels. The larger of the two sites was set for 600,000 square feet of Class A office space in the form of two towers, while the smaller site will be entitled for 200,000 square feet of commercial office space, the Times reported. Gilead is in the process of rebuilding some facilities on its current campus. When the project is complete, the company should have 17 new buildings on its site, the Times said.
How the recent ruling against Gilead for patent infringement will impact the expansion is not known. This week a jury upheld the validity of two hepatitis C patents owned by Merck . Merck argued Gilead’s blockbuster hepatitis C drugs Harvoni and Sovaldi infringed on patents it owned along with Southern California-based Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In February, a Judge ruled that Gilead’s two drugs, which provide a near cure for hepatitis C, did infringe on Merck’s patents.
Merck is seeking 10 percent of sales of the drugs. At stake is billions of dollars in annual revenue for Gilead. Harvoni generated nearly $20 billion in sales in 2015. Harvoni and Sovaldi helped drive Gilead to a record revenue year in 2015, nearly $32 billion—more than three times what the company generated in 2012.
Yesterday, the federal jury ordered Gilead to pay Merck $200 million in damages for infringing two Merck patents.
Gilead isn’t done developing treatments for hepatitis. In January, Gilead submitted a New Drug Application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for tenofovir alafenamide, an investigational, once-daily treatment for adults with chronic hepatitis B virus infection. The company is also continuing to use Sovaldi in combination with other drugs, including a triplet drug comprised of Sovaldi, velpatasvir, and a protease inhibitor for the treatment of genotype 3 HCV patients. Also, in the waning days of 2015, Harvoni was approved for expanded use in patients with genotype 4, 5 and 6 chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and in patients co-infected with HIV by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In addition, Harvoni plus ribavirin (RBV) for 12 weeks was approved as an alternate therapy to 24 weeks of Harvoni for treatment-experienced, genotype 1 patients with cirrhosis.
In addition to the issues with the hepatitis C patent problems, Gilead halted six expanded trials for its cancer drug Zydelig following concerns of adverse effects and deaths. The trials cancellation raises questions on the future of the cancer treatment as a first line treatment for cancer. Zydelig gained regulatory approval in the United States in 2014 for three blood cancers—for relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia in combination with Roche ‘s Rituxan (rituximab); to treat patients with relapsed follicular B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma; and relapsed small lymphocytic lymphoma. In Europe, Zydelig for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia in combination with Rituxan. It is approved on its own for treating follicular lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Zydelig generated $132 million in revenue during its first full year on the market, the San Francisco Business Times said.
