Hal Bar­ron keeps 23andMe close on GSK's side to find more genes the R&D team can go af­ter

Four years af­ter first en­list­ing 23andMe on a jour­ney of tar­get dis­cov­ery, Hal Bar­ron wants to keep go­ing.

Glax­o­SmithK­line has ex­er­cised its op­tion to ex­tend its pact for an­oth­er year — to Ju­ly 2023 — pay­ing a one-time pay­ment of $50 mil­lion to mine new drug tar­gets from the part­ner’s ge­net­ic and health sur­vey data­bas­es.

The deal­mak­ing goes both ways: 23andMe is al­so tak­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to grab a roy­al­ty op­tion on GSK’608, an an­ti­body tar­get­ing CD96.

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