Gilead brings Medicxi’s tiny Gade­ta in­to the cell ther­a­py fold, hunt­ing a way to pick the lock on sol­id tu­mors

The bat­tle­ship Gilead has added a small but po­ten­tial­ly re­mark­able biotech tug boat to its fast-grow­ing cell ther­a­py drug fleet.

The bio­phar­ma pow­er­house’s CAR-T com­pa­ny Kite is al­ly­ing with tiny Gade­ta in the Nether­lands, ink­ing a deal to col­lab­o­rate on its gam­ma delta TCR tech, fund­ing re­search and lin­ing up an op­tion to buy them out if it all works out.

De­tails are scant. Gade­ta was seed­ed by Medicxi out of Lon­don, which al­so joined Bax­al­ta Ven­tures on a slim $8 mil­lion launch round in 2016. Now with a staff in the 20s, Gade­ta is still pre­clin­i­cal, but lin­ing up a shot at a crit­i­cal hu­man study for sol­id tu­mors in 2020. And Gilead/Kite is hop­ing that Gade­ta — spe­cial­iz­ing in the high­ly spe­cif­ic gam­ma delta field — will open up a world of new op­por­tu­ni­ties in on­col­o­gy.

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