Cash-rich Gilead is exploring potential acquisition targets, in search of its next blockbuster, reports Financial Times.
Gilead is specifically targeting companies offering drugs that have already had successful early-stage trials. Norbert Bischofberger, Gilead's executive vice-president of research and development, told FT in an interview, “We have our eye on the external world — we have incredible cash flows and we are looking for opportunities.”
Harvoni, approved in October 2014 and Sovaldi, approved in December 2013 bear the bulk of the credit for the biotech's $27 billion in Hep C revenue.
Sovaldi's $1000 per pill pricetag has Gilead under fire in the war against high drug pricing. A recent U.S. Senate investigation into pricing of blockbuster medicines found that U.S. state Medicaid programs spent $1.3 billion before rebates in 2014 on Gilead's new hepatitis C drugs to treat fewer than 2.4 percent of enrollees with the disease.
Read the FT article