Gilead partners with Goldfinch Bio to develop drugs for diabetic kidney disease

Gilead Sciences entered a collaboration with Goldfinch Bio to develop and commercialise a pipeline of therapeutics for diabetic kidney disease (DKD) and certain orphan kidney diseases, the companies reported Wednesday. Under the deal, Gilead will make upfront payments of $55 million to Goldfinch, including a $5 million equity investment, with the latter eligible to receive up to $1.95 billion in potential payments for the first five collaboration programmes.

"Goldfinch has established unique genetic and biology platforms that will allow for the identification and validation of novel targets for kidney disease and for the discovery and development of novel compounds," remarked Gilead chief scientific officer John McHutchison.

The drugmakers noted that under the agreement, Gilead has exclusive options to license worldwide rights to certain products directed toward targets from Goldfinch's Kidney Genome Atlas (KGA), a registry of patients with kidney diseases integrating genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic data with patient clinical profiles. Gilead will also pay Goldfinch $54 million to support the development of the KGA platform for DKD.  

According to the companies, following target identification and validation, Goldfinch will lead discovery and development, with Gilead assuming responsibility for development and commercialisation of any products it decides to license. Meanwhile, Goldfinch will hold an option to lead development and co-promote optioned products directed to specific kidney disease targets, as well as equally share in US profits for some optioned products for specific pre-defined kidney indications. The drugmakers noted that the deal excludes Goldfinch's existing programmes, GFB-887 and GFB-024, which are in preclinical development for focal segmental glomerulosclerosis.

The agreement comes after Gilead inked a pact last December with Scholar Rock to jointly discover and develop highly specific inhibitors of transforming growth factor beta for the treatment of fibrotic diseases.

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