Gilead and Alphabet's Verily to Collaborate on Research in Immunological and Molecular Drivers of Inflammatory Diseases

Gilead Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: GILD) and Verily Life Sciences LLC, an Alphabet company, today announced a scientific collaboration using Verily’s Immunoscape platform to identify and better understand the immunological basis of three common and serious inflammatory diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and lupus-related diseases.

This is the first large-scale deployment of Immunoscape. Immunoscape platform combines immunogenomic phenotyping and advanced computational analysis techniques to profile the molecular characteristics of inflammatory diseases at high resolution. Through the collaboration, Gilead will provide clinical data and thousands of immune cell samples from participants before, during and after administration of novel drugs in the company’s ongoing Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical studies.

“Inflammatory diseases are complex and heterogeneous, and despite treatment advances, most patients experience neither deep nor long-lasting remissions,” said John McHutchison, MD, Chief Scientific Officer, Head of Research and Development, Gilead. “We are excited to be collaborating with the scientists at Verily to accelerate our understanding of these common and serious inflammatory diseases. We hope to ultimately improve patient outcomes using this cutting-edge technology to identify molecular disease pathways that would otherwise remain undetected.”

“With the Immunoscape platform, we are seeking to develop a molecular map of inflammatory diseases that will help us identify and characterize disease mechanisms,” added Jessica Mega, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Verily. “This collaboration with Gilead is an incredible opportunity to learn much more about these immune-mediated conditions than ever before, and to hone in on potential paths to deliver more precise medicine to patients.”

All data and samples will be coded to protect patient privacy, and any findings of the analysis will include patient data only in aggregate.