Gilead Target has 500 million U.S. dollars in deals with Preciion BioSciences

after successfully curing hepatitis C with treatments such as Sovaldi and Harvoni, Gilead is now seeking a new partner to fight hepatitis B (HBV).Gilead has signed a $500 million partnership with genome editing specialist Precision Biosciences to develop treatments for HBV that are harder to eliminate than the liver.
current HBV therapies, including Gilead's own Hepsera, Viread and Vemlidy, focus on inhibiting viral DNA replication, but not completely removing the virus. People with hepatitis B often have to undergo life-long treatment because the presence of co-priced closed ring DNA (cccDNA) can replicate HBV if treatment is discontinued.
, however, this collaboration will target the elimination of viruses in the body and will use ARCUS, the genome editing platform of Precision BioSciences, to further develop this goal. Derek Jantz, Precision's chief scientific officer, commented: "Gilead's treatment for hepatitis B is comprehensive and exciting. Precision is pleased that preliminary research using our ARCUS platform has established the important role of genome editing in HBV programs. This is a good application for our technology, and significant progress has been made in the treatment of in vivo therapy in the relevant models over the past year. The
ARCUS platform is based on the natural genome editing enzyme home nucleic acid inchease, which identifies long DNA sequences. These enzymes can modify the genome with new DNA sequences.
, however, Precisions' technique comes from ARC nuclease, a synthetic enzyme similar to the home nucleic acid intra-cutting enzyme. The advantage is that synthetic enzymes can be customized to identify DNA sequences within any target gene. John McHutchison, Gilead's newly appointed head of research and development and chief scientific officer, said the technology has some exciting potential and is promising in in-body activities. "Gilead is committed to developing innovative therapies to enable functional therapy for patients with chronic hepatitis B virus infection," he said. We look forward to using this technology as an important part of our HBV healing efforts. "
agreement will put Precision in charge of research into nuclease development, formulation and preclinical evaluation, while Gilead will clinically develop candidate drugs and commercialize potential therapies. Precision Bioscience is eligible for milestone payments of up to $445 million, as well as interim royalties for sales and commercial products developed in partnership. Gilead needs to find new drugs to replace revenue from its hepatitis C franchise, which has been a huge success over the years but is now falling sharply. The company got some good news from rheumatoid arthritis earlier this week, but is still looking for market-leading innovative drugs. (This net special draft)