American pharmaceutical company Gilead buys Catalan company’s research into HIV vaccine

Catalan company AELIX Therapeutics just crowned the mountain. This biopharmaceutical company based in Barcelona reached an agreement according to which The American pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences is directing all its research to develop a vaccine against HIV.. That is, it has managed to ensure that its scientific proposal receives the necessary capital and infrastructure to make its entry into the market more possible, although this is not what the Catalan company itself is seeking.

This is a common formula in this industry and is considered a success for the person involved, although, as in this case, it practically implies the dissolution of the company: AELIX was completely focused on developing this treatment. “We are pleased that a company of Gilead’s stature, a leader in HIV treatment, prevention and cure research, has decided to acquire the research assets associated with AELIX’s HTI therapeutic HIV vaccine.

“confirms in his statement executive president of the Catalan company, Thomas Hecht.

In this document, Hecht explains that this HTI vaccine, which is essentially retrains the immune system to learn how to fight HIV, the virus that at its most advanced stage leads to AIDS.– has demonstrated promising results in phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials, and that this agreement allows the development of this treatment to continue through subsequent phases. “We look forward to the development of this immunogen through this acquisition, and, potentially becoming a key player in the search for a cure for HIV“he adds.

Also AELIX Chief Scientist and Company Co-Founder, Christian Branderpronounced in this sense. “We are glad that our HTI T cell immunogen

is now in the hands of an innovative pharmaceutical company like Gilead Sciences, which has the necessary capacity and resources to advance the evaluation of this asset as part of a potential HIV treatment strategy,” explains this researcher. purchase amount.

Origin and relationship with Gilead

Founded in 2015 based on research conducted between him and doctors Beatriz Mott and Anushka Llano at IrsiCaixa, an AIDS research institute founded by the La Caixa Foundation and the Generalitat, AELIX Therapeutics is an offshoot of the HIVACAT program., a Catalan public-private consortium dedicated to cutting-edge scientific developments in this field. and that they started a collaboration between IrsiCaixa itself and the HIV-AIDS department of the Barcelona Hospital Clinic. After AELIX was founded as an independent company, funds such as Ysios Capital or 10K Lakes Fund II have invested in it.who now see that their investment has more than paid off.

For my part, Gilead Sciences is a pharmaceutical company based in California (USA) with annual sales of $27 billion (just over €25 billion) last year.focused on the research and development of antiviral drugs used in the treatment of diseases such as HIV, hepatitis B and C or covid. This company has already collaborated with AELIX in the past.in launching one of the clinical trials to evaluate the viability of its vaccine.