Gilead hands off Asia

Gilead Sciences Inc. flirted with the idea of building an Asian marketing operation for its Adefovir hepatitis B product, given that Asia is the largest market for Adefovir. But ultimately, GILD decided it made more sense to license the rights to GlaxoSmithKline plc.

GILD (Foster City, Calif.) has no business operations in Asia. John Milligan, senior vice president and CFO, told BioCentury that GILD wanted to "focus on developing a drug for the U.S. and Europe, and yet be able to meet an unmet need in developing countries. Our initial strategy was to out-license the product for the Asian market, but when the drug profile came through so strong, we contemplated building businesses in Asia. However, it became clear that we had resource constraints and expertise constraints."...