February 10, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Foster City, Calif.-based Gilead Sciences, Inc. announced today it is setting up a new commercial headquarters in London, as part of an increased British presence. The headquarters will be located in Holborn, and its international operations located in Uxbridge and its research and development facility in Cambridge will be expanded.
All told, Gilead will invest $19.6 million and double its UK workforce to 600, 400 located in London. The move is part of a City of London campaign dubbed MedCity that was designed to boost the life sciences industry in London and south and east of England.
In addition to Gilead, Boston-based Mobiquity Inc., will be moving there as well. Mobiquity Inc. is a professional services firm that focuses on business and mobile strategy and technology. Mobiquity Inc.’s clients include Pfizer Inc. , Merck & Co. , AbbVie and Weight Watchers. It will based its European headquarters in London.
“London and Boston are two of the greatest scientific cities on the planet and our phenomenal research institutions are collaborating closely to help spur the discovery of new treatments to tackle disease,” said London Mayor Boris Johnson in a statement. “Gilead and Mobiquity’s moves to London further underline the growing importance of the life sciences industry in the UK as we look to ensure that this crucial sector becomes a key contributor to the capital’s growth and health.”
The MedCity campaign seems to be working. In November 2014 Merck & Co. (MRK) announced plans to invest 42 million pounds in a new licensing hub in London and increase its research presence in southeast England. Pfizer Inc. set up a new gene therapy unit in the city to research rare diseases. Also, Johnson & Johnson operates one of its innovation centers in London.
MedCity was created by and three UK-based academic health science centers, Imperial College Academic Health Science Centre, King’s Health Partners and UCLPartners.
On Jan. 9, 2015, Gilead announced it had signed a definitive agreement with health insurance company Anthem, Inc. to offer the company’s drug Harvoni as the primary treatment for genotype 1 hepatitis C. This is part of what appears to be a price war between Gilead and Chicago-based AbbVie (ABBV). AbbVie (ABBV) offers a competing product, Viekira Pak.
All three products are expensive: Gilead’s Sovaldi runs around $84,000 per course of treatment, while Harvoni’s 12-week course costs around $94,500. Viekira Pak’s price for a 12-2week course is $83,310. That announcement was only the most recent.
On Jan. 7 Gilead announced a rights deal with CVS Health Corp. to exclusively sell Harvoni and Sovaldi. On Dec. 22 Express Scripts, the largest pharmacy benefit manager in the U.S. signed an exclusive agreement with AbbVie for Viekira Pak. Express Scripts also announced it would no longer cover Gilead’s Sovaldi and Harvoni.
BioSpace Temperature Poll
Who Do You Think Will Be Sanofi’s New CEO? French drugmaker Sanofi said Thursday that it will name a new chief executive in mere weeks, as it attempted to put to rest rumors that the company could not find any executives willing to take the reins after it unceremoniously ousted its previous CEO last fall. Who do you think will soon be crowned king? BioSpace wants your opinion!
