Gilead Sciences acquires Tubulis for $5bn

First announced last month, the move aims to advance Gilead’s oncology portfolio.

Under the agreement, the company acquired all outstanding equity of Tubulis for $3.15bn upfront on a cash-free, debt-free basis, with up to $1.85bn in potential milestone payments.

The Tubulis team will remain headquartered in Munich, establishing the company’s ADC Innovation Center to further drive integrated discovery, manufacturing, and clinical advances in ADCs.

The acquisition provides Gilead access to advanced ADC technologies designed to improve the selective delivery of diverse payloads to tumours.

Tubulis’ technologies facilitate the creation of distinctive ADCs with enhanced biophysical characteristics, which are capable of ensuring substantial on-tumour payload delivery that may lead to prolonged anti-tumour activity.

The inclusion of Tubulis’ primary asset, TUB-040, a NaPi2b-targeted topoisomerase-I inhibitor (TOPO1i) ADC, which has shown encouraging results in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, along with TUB-030, a 5T4-targeted ADC currently being explored for various solid tumour types, enhances Gilead’s current ADC portfolio.

Gilead Sciences chairman and CEO Daniel O’Day said: “We look forward to welcoming the Tubulis team to Gilead and building on the significant progress they have made in advancing novel ADC technology for people living with cancer.

“Our two-year collaboration with Tubulis gave us strong conviction in their team, their programmes and their technologies. We will now combine our strengths in service of providing new options for some of the most challenging forms of disease.”

TUB-040, currently in an ongoing Phase I/IIa multi-centre study, leverages Tubutecan technology. It uses eight chemotherapy payloads attached by a cleavable linker, aiming to kill cancer cells while reducing impact on healthy tissue.

In March 2026, Gilead agreed to acquire Ouro Medicines for $2.2bn, marking its entry into the T-cell engager space and extending its relationship with Galapagos.

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