Wheel­ing and deal­ing his way to a can­cer drug pipeline, Gilead’s Dan O’Day crafts a rich, $805M deal to bag a pre­clin­i­cal I/O drug

Look­ing to leap in­to the front of an in­cip­i­ent race to de­vel­op an­ti-CCR8 drugs for can­cer, Gilead has plunked down $120 mil­lion in cash and of­fered up to $685 mil­lion in a deal to land the de­vel­op­ment rights for a drug that’s proved quite ef­fec­tive — in mice.

Gilead has turned to Jounce Ther­a­peu­tics for its lat­est can­cer drug, fit­ting neat­ly in­to new CEO Dan O’Day’s strat­e­gy to re­fo­cus the com­pa­ny around a new on­col­o­gy pipeline with a mul­ti-pronged set of tar­gets while un­der­scor­ing his will­ing­ness to pay large sums for ear­ly-stage pro­grams.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER