FOSTER CITY, Calif. & SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Gilead Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: GILD) and Verily Life Sciences LLC, an Alphabet company, today announced a scientific collaboration using Verily’s Immunoscape platform to identify and better understand the immunological basis of three common and serious inflammatory diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and lupus-related diseases. In this first large-scale deployment of Immunoscape, a unique platform for generating immunological data and insights, Verily will analyze biological samples and clinical disease and treatment response data from patients participating in current and future Gilead clinical trials. This three-year collaboration represents the broadest effort to date to interrogate the activity of specific subtypes of immune cells to better understand disease signatures and treatment response, and has the potential to guide future drug discovery and development with the goal of improving outcomes for people living with these diseases.
Verily’s state-of-the-art Immunoscape platform combines immunogenomic phenotyping and advanced computational analysis techniques to profile the molecular characteristics of inflammatory diseases at high resolution. Through the collaboration, Gilead will provide clinical data and thousands of immune cell samples from participants before, during and after administration of novel drugs in the company’s ongoing Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical studies.
This effort may lead to important new insights into these inflammatory diseases, including identifying molecular signatures that can help physicians to select a therapy or dosing tailored to a specific subgroup of patients, which could improve treatment results and avoid side effects. The data generated in this collaboration may also enable better characterization of subtypes of inflammatory diseases to help scientists identify new molecular targets leading to new therapies.
“Inflammatory diseases are complex and heterogeneous, and despite treatment advances, most patients experience neither deep nor long-lasting remissions,” said John McHutchison, MD, Chief Scientific Officer, Head of Research and Development, Gilead. “We are excited to be collaborating with the scientists at Verily to accelerate our understanding of these common and serious inflammatory diseases. We hope to ultimately improve patient outcomes using this cutting-edge technology to identify molecular disease pathways that would otherwise remain undetected.”
“With the Immunoscape platform, we are seeking to develop a molecular map of inflammatory diseases that will help us identify and characterize disease mechanisms,” added Jessica Mega, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Verily. “This collaboration with Gilead is an incredible opportunity to learn much more about these immune-mediated conditions than ever before, and to hone in on potential paths to deliver more precise medicine to patients.”
All data and samples will be coded to protect patient privacy, and any findings of the analysis will include patient data only in aggregate.
About Gilead Sciences
Gilead Sciences is a biopharmaceutical company that discovers, develops and commercializes innovative therapeutics in areas of unmet medical need. The company’s mission is to advance the care of patients suffering from life-threatening diseases. Gilead has operations in more than 35 countries worldwide, with headquarters in Foster City, California.
About Verily Life Sciences
Launched in 2015, Verily is a subsidiary of Alphabet focused on life sciences and healthcare. Verily’s mission is to make the world’s health data useful so that people enjoy healthier lives. Verily develops tools and devices to collect, organize and activate health data, and creates interventions to prevent and manage disease. Verily partners with leading life sciences, medical device and government organizations, using deep hardware, software, scientific, and healthcare expertise to enable faster development, meaningful advances, and deployment at scale. For more information, please visit www.verily.com.
Gilead Forward-Looking Statements
This press release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, including the risk that the parties may not realize the potential benefits of this collaboration, such as findings that are relevant to Gilead’s inflammatory diseases pipeline. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and other factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those referred to in the forward-looking statements. The reader is cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. These and other risks are described in detail in Gilead’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017, as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements are based on information currently available to Gilead, and Gilead assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements.
For more information on Gilead Sciences, please visit the company’s website at www.gilead.com, follow Gilead on Twitter (@GileadSciences) or call Gilead Public Affairs at 1-800-GILEAD-5 or 1-650-574-3000.
