Gilead Sciences on Monday said it will buy a subsidiary of Nimbus Therapeutics LLC and its experimental pill for an increasingly common metabolic disorder that causes life-threatening fat buildup in the liver.
Gilead will pay $400 million for Nimbus Apollo Inc. Parent company Nimbus Therapeutics could receive another $800 million if Nimbus Apollo’s drug development program meets milestones.
Gilead has been sitting on billions generated by its lucrative hepatitis C medicines: Harvoni and Sovaldi. At the end of 2015, it held $26.2 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Investors have been expecting Gilead to use that on deals to boost its pipeline of experimental drugs before the hepatitis C revenue starts falling.
The Nimbus deal brings Gilead a drug that could treat fatty liver and possibly liver cancer and other diseases, plus technology for “designing” more-targeted medicines faster.
