From $3M to $1.9B: Glax­o­SmithK­line in­serts dis­card­ed Gilead drug in­to late-stage port­fo­lio, buy­ing out the turn­around crew at Sier­ra

As a drug for­mer­ly aban­doned by Gilead fi­nal­ly looks set to com­plete its tor­tu­ous jour­ney to­ward FDA ap­proval, Glax­o­SmithK­line is shelling out $1.9 bil­lion to snap it up.

Sier­ra On­col­o­gy gets the cred­it for sal­vaging mo­melo­tinib — which Gilead first ob­tained through ac­quir­ing YM Bio­Sciences for $510 mil­lion, but of­floaded in 2018 fol­low­ing late-stage fail­ure — and steer­ing it to a pos­i­tive Phase III read­out ear­li­er this year. Start­ed by the crew that used to run YM, Sier­ra had paid on­ly $3 mil­lion in cash to scoop up the drug, in ad­di­tion to $192 mil­lion in biobucks that Gilead will like­ly pock­et giv­en its suc­cess.

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