Titanium media note:Since the outbreak of new coronavirus pneumonia, pharmaceutical research has been the focus of public attention.
On January 31st, the authoritative medical journal NEJM published a paper, which introduced the diagnosis and treatment process of the first confirmed case in the United States, and mentioned that the patient’s condition was rapidly relieved after receiving experimental treatment with Remdesivir, a drug developed by Gilead Scientific Company.
Since then, Gilead has issued a statement on the drug research and development action taken against the new coronavirus in 2019, and said that it is working closely with the health authorities in China. On February 4th, Remdesivir arrived in China, and will start a clinical trial to treat Covid-19 pneumonia in China.
This series of measures made the pharmaceutical company behind Remdesivir, Gilead, attract widespread attention.
Today, after Wuhan Virus Institute publicly declared the patent of antiviral drug Remdesivir, the global CEO of Gilead Science responded to this "patent dispute" at a company meeting.
Patents are not our primary concern at present. I asked my colleagues in charge of patents. Just like other drugs of Gilead, we have applied for compounds and patents including coronavirus for Remdesivir in various regions of the world. We will not get involved in this patent issue, we will find ways to help patients, and of course we will protect our intellectual property rights in other ways, but patients come first.
Gilead’s patient-oriented pharmaceutical spirit has once again focused on the public’s vision. So, what kind of enterprise is Remdesivir’s Gilead Science Company?
Founded in 1987, Gilead Science Company is a biopharmaceutical company engaged in drug development and sales based on research. Headquartered in California, Gilead is known as the "Apple Company in Pharmaceutical Industry" for its innovative ability.
Twenty-eight products were listed in 31 years, and single-chip compound agent for AIDS treatment was listed in 2006. In 2013, Sovaldi, the first "medicine for hepatitis C", entered the first echelon of global CAR-T therapy in 2017. It took Gilead less than 30 years to become one of the TOP10 global pharmaceutical companies.
Gilead’s success comes from high R&D investment, which is based on the first bucket of gold brought by the founder.
Michael Aodan is the founder of Gilead. When the company was founded in 1987, Aodan, who was only 29 years old, was already good at capital operation. In the second year after its establishment, Aodan raised $2 million in venture capital. In 1989, Aodan received another $10 million in venture capital, from which many projects were studied.
Although Aodan received many venture investments in the early days of his business, Gilead was a drop in the bucket in the first few years. It was not until March 1991 that Gilead won the first cooperation fund of 1.3 million US dollars, and in the same year signed an agreement with a European university laboratory to obtain the right to develop a group of nucleotide compounds, so Gilead was able to start the research in the field of antiviral drugs that he had been focusing on since then.
Since then, while Gilead’s R&D investment has achieved fruitful results, funds have also been rolling in. In January 1992, Gilead went public, which provided financial support for its huge R&D investment.
After eight years of "pioneering", Gilead accumulated $167 million in assets, and the enterprise was at the dawn. Gilead continues to focus on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/ AIDS, liver diseases, blood/tumors, cardiovascular diseases and inflammatory/respiratory diseases.
In later years, Gilead developed a series of products to fight virus and inflammation, including AmBisome, Atripla, Cayston, Complera/Eviplera, Descovy, Emtriva and so on.
In order to devote himself to the research and development of antiviral drugs, Gilead also sold the antisense therapy studied for many years to Ionis pharma and the tumor business to OSI pharma.
Gilead has rewritten the course of treatment of major human diseases many times, including oseltamivir (Tamiflu), a well-known anti-influenza drug. It took only seven years for oseltamivir to go on the market successfully, which is rare and efficient in the history of modern new drug research and development, and has also become a classic case of structure-based drug design.
In 2016 -2018 and the first three quarters of 2019, the net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company after deduction by Gilead Science was 93.656 billion yuan, 30.240 billion yuan, 37.439 billion yuan and 19.026 billion yuan respectively, and the R&D expenses in the same period were 35.365 billion yuan, 24.399 billion yuan, 34.440 billion yuan and 50.974 billion yuan respectively.
Up to now, Gilead’s total R&D investment is $25.02 billion, but the return is as high as $175 billion, and this is not the value of the products under research.
The solid capital base is endorsed by the high R&D expenses, and a large amount of investment in R&D has promoted the continuous growth of the company’s income, forming a virtuous circle for the long-term development of Gilead.
If Gilead’s success stems from its strategy of attaching importance to research and development, then its growth can not be separated from the merger and acquisition in the past two years.
In June 2010, Gilead acquired CGI Pharmaceuticals, a private company, with a purchase price of $120 million. This biotechnology company has a batch of very potential patented small molecule kinase inhibitors, including preclinical candidate compounds targeting spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk).
In February 2011, Gilead announced the acquisition of Calistoga Pharmaceuticals for $375 million. This is a biotechnology company in the clinical development stage. The main candidate drug is CAL-101, a highly selective inhibitor of PI3K, which is the first in the world. Later, Gilead changed its code name to GS-1101, that is, Zydelig, a listed product. In 2014, Zydelig was approved for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia and lymphoma.
In 2012, Gilead also acquired Pharmasset for $11 billion. At that time, Pharmasset Pharmaceutical Company only had 82 employees, but its greatest value was its possession of PSI-7977, a hepatitis C treatment drug, which was named Sovaldi after it went on the market. After Sovaldi was approved for marketing, HCV therapeutic drugs Harvoni and Epclusa were listed in succession. By the first quarter of 2017, the sales of these three drugs had reached 49.2 billion US dollars.
The popularity of Sovaldi, the "magic medicine for hepatitis C", has caused the market value of Gilead to skyrocket five times. Harvoni, the second-generation hepatitis C drug, ranked second in the global drug sales list in 2015 and 2016.
This also enabled Gilead to become the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world in July 2015, with a market value as high as 160 billion US dollars.
Since then, Gilead has successively acquired pharmaceutical companies with R&D potential such as Epitherapeutics, Kite Pharma and Cell Design Labs, further expanding its pharmaceutical field and territory.
The continuous growth of Gilead’s science is inseparable from its continuous global expansion. This pharmaceutical company entered China in 2007 and established its Shanghai headquarters in 2016.
In 2017, since the first chronic hepatitis C treatment drug Sovadi of Gillette Science was approved in China, eight drugs have been listed in China, covering hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV/ AIDS. The approval of hepatitis B drug Vemlidy in China achieved a 52% increase. Gilead predicted that with the penetration of the US market and the pull of the China market, Vemlidy could achieve a revenue of $1 billion in 2022.
On May 30, 2018, a new drug for the treatment of hepatitis C by Gilead’s pan-genotype was approved in China; In November 2019, four drugs from Gillette Company were included in the 2019 edition of the National Medical Insurance Catalogue.
A few days ago, the news of the recovery of the first confirmed case of Covid-19 came from the United States, and the Remdesivir developed by Gilead Science Company made it the focus of media attention. After the news that taking Remdesivir improved his condition, Gilead rose by 3% immediately after the close. Thus, for Gilead, its global layout has become an indispensable driving force for the continuous growth of the enterprise.
Although the investment in pharmaceutical research and development is high and the cycle is long, gambling can bring high returns. For Gilead, it is because of his long-term concentration and daring to take risks that he can stay ahead in this fierce and high-risk field.
(Titanium media editor Tao Tao integrated from Snowball, sohu finance)
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