Drug Company Buyout to Boost Development of Liver Disease Drugs

A strategic buyout will broaden the role of an American pharmaceutical research and manufacturing company in the area of liver diseases.

 

 

 

The biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences (Foster City, CA, USA) has announced the purchase of Nimbus Apollo Inc., a subsidiary of Nimbus Therapeutics LLC (Cambridge, MA, USA). Gilead is set to pay 400 million USD for Nimbus Apollo, and the parent company could receive up to another 800 million USD, if Nimbus Apollo's drug development program meets certain milestones in testing results and medicine approval and sales.

 

 

 

Implementation of the agreement will give Gilead access to the experimental drug NDI-010976, which is being tested for the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, known by the acronym NASH. This disorder causes inflammation, cell damage, progressive scarring, and cirrhosis of the liver. An estimated 15 million Americans suffer from NASH.

 

 

 

In February 2016, the drug NDI-010976 was awarded [US] Food and Drug Administration "fast-track" designation, which speeds up regulatory review and approval. The drug blocks two forms of the enzyme acetyl CoA carboxylase (ACC), which is involved in cellular fatty acid metabolism.

 

 

 

Dr. Norbert Bischofberger, CSO at Gilead, said, "The acquisition will complement and further strengthen Gilead's ongoing efforts to address unmet needs in NASH."

 

 

 

In addition to the acquisition of NDI-010976, the purchase brings to Gilead Nimbus' breakthrough computational chemistry platform that was designed to enable rapid discovery, design, and tweaking of potential medicinal compounds.

 

 

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