Gilead bets big on in vivo cell therapy with $350M Interius buy

Gilead Sciences is acquiring Interius BioTherapeutics for $350 million to gain its in vivo cell therapy platform, which reprograms immune cells inside the body, offering a potential leap beyond traditional CAR-T therapies.

Why it matters: CAR-T involves complex processes of extracting, modifying, and reinfusing a patient’s cells, which limits scalability. This new in vivo approach could drastically simplify cancer treatment, cut production times, reduce costs, and expand patient access to life-saving therapies.

Backstory: Gilead bought Kite Pharma for $12B in 2017, becoming a CAR-T leader. But with demand dropping and competitors rising, its cell therapy business has faltered. Interius, spun out of the University of Pennsylvania in 2021, raised $76M to develop less invasive immune therapies.

Zoom in: Interius’ lead candidate, INT2104, is among the first in vivo therapies tested in humans and is currently undergoing Phase 1 trials. It uses engineered viruses to deliver cancer-fighting instructions directly into immune cells.

Big picture: In vivo cell therapies, which modify cells directly inside the patient, are gaining traction across the industry with pharma giants like AstraZeneca and AbbVie making moves in this space. Gilead’s recent acquisition of Interius aligns with this broader shift toward more efficient, accessible treatments in oncology.