AIDS Drug To Net $525 Million For Emory University

Abstract

In what may be the largest ever payment to a university for intellectual property, Gilead Sciences and Royalty Pharma have agreed to purchase Emory University's royalty interest in emtricitabine—a drug discovered by Emory researchers—for $525 million. A treatment for HIV used in combination with other antiretroviral agents, emtricitabine was licensed in 1996 to Triangle Pharmaceutical. Gilead purchased Triangle in 2003 and named the drug Emtriva. Under the agreement, Gilead will be responsible for 65% of the payment to Emory. Royalty Pharma, an investment firm that targets royalty positions in marketed drugs, will pay the remaining 35%. Emory says it will invest the proceeds from the transaction in research, in accordance with the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which encourages commercialization of federally funded university research. Much of the research on emtricitabine was done with NIH funding. We feel privileged and humbled to receive such extraordinary recognition for the value of our intellectual propert...