Dive Brief:

• Abingworth, a venture capital group owned by Carlyle, will invest as much as $210 million to help Gilead Sciences further expand the approved usage of the cancer drug Trodelvy.
• Trodelvy has been approved in the U.S. since April 2020 to treat breast cancer. Gilead acquired the therapy as part of its $21 billion takeover of Immunomedics later that year. 
• The agreement announced Thursday focuses on funding for studies of Trodelvy in non-small cell lung cancer. Gilead keeps all the rights to the medicine, but will make a fixed payment if it wins approval of a specific new label expansion as well as royalties on U.S. sales for that tumor type.

Dive Insight:

The deal offers a vote of confidence in Trodelvy, which suffered a setback in January when it missed the main goal of a Phase 3 lung cancer trial. 

Though the research suggested the drug might help improve survival compared with chemotherapy, the finding didn’t reach statistical significance.

As part of the agreement, a joint steering committee will be set up for Gilead and Launch Therapeutics, a clinical development company backed by Abingworth and Carlyle. Launch Therapeutics, founded in 2022, offers its partners access to capital along with “deep drug development, medical, clinical operations, regulatory and commercialization expertise,” according to Abingworth. 

The deal is a bit unusual, considering Gilead has plenty of cash; the company reported $8.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable debt securities at the end of December. Still, the agreement fits the Abingworth model. Late last year, the group raised $356 million to invest in late-stage drug development through its Clinical Co-Development Co-Investment Fund and has already supported a number of approved medications.

Trodelvy is an antibody-drug conjugate, which combines a tumor-killing chemical with a targeting antibody. The idea is to deliver more potent medicine in a safer way for patients. It’s an approach that has come of age in recent years, sparking a run of deals and investments in startup companies.