Gilead Charts Path to Top 5 Oncology Company Through ADC and CAR-T Expansion
Key Insights
Gilead is leveraging its virology legacy to build a leading oncology portfolio centered on antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and CAR T-cell therapies, with Chief Medical Officer Dietmar Berger targeting top 10 or top 5 oncology company status within a few years.
Recent acquisitions of Tubulis (search) (next-generation ADC platform), Interius (search) (in vivo CAR T-cell therapy), and a multiple myeloma (search)-focused company are strategically expanding Gilead's pipeline across both solid tumors and hematologic cancers.
Kite (search), a Gilead company, has now treated over 34,500 patients worldwide with its cell therapies and maintains an industry-leading 96% manufacturing success rate through its fully integrated in-house manufacturing network.
Gilead Sciences is making an aggressive push to redefine itself as a major oncology player, building on its decades-long legacy in virology to assemble what leadership describes as a top-tier cancer portfolio. In two recent sponsored conversations at STAT events, Chief Medical Officer Dietmar Berger and other senior leaders detailed the company's strategy, which hinges on two transformative platforms: antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and CAR T-cell therapies.
"I firmly believe that we're on the path to being a top 10 or top five oncology company within the next few years," Berger said during a STAT@ASCO interview, underscoring the scale of Gilead's ambition.
A Three-Pronged Acquisition Strategy
Central to Gilead's oncology expansion are three recent acquisitions that Berger described as "a really good fit to our current portfolio and our ambition." The first targets multiple myeloma (search), while the second—the acquisition of Interius (search)—positions Gilead in the emerging field of in vivo CAR T-cell therapies. The third, Tubulis (search), brings an entirely novel approach to ADC technology.
Berger highlighted Tubulis (search) as particularly distinctive: "It's a company that has an entirely new approach to antibody-drug conjugates — very different chemistry, very different understanding of the linkers, different linker chemistry, and also very different ways of connecting the linkers to the payloads, which gives us a lot of flexibility."
Mika Kakefuda Derynck, Senior Vice President and Therapeutic Area Head of Oncology at Gilead, reinforced this point, noting that the Tubulis (search) acquisition is "further strengthening our ADC platform, adding potentially best in class assets and next generation technology."
Kite (search)'s CAR-T Leadership and Manufacturing Edge
Kite (search), a Gilead company, has established itself as a leader in the CAR T-cell therapy space. Gallia Levy, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Development at Kite, reported that the company has now treated over 34,500 patients worldwide—"the most patients treated out of any CAR-T company."
A key differentiator for Kite (search) is its fully integrated manufacturing network. "We're the only CAR-T company that has a fully integrated cell therapy manufacturing network, so that means we manufacture each and every dose in-house," Levy explained. This vertical integration enables "an industry-leading 96% manufacturing success rate and some of the fastest turnaround times in the industry for our currently approved CAR-Ts."
The company currently operates 600 authorized treatment centers worldwide and is actively working to expand that footprint to bring CAR-T therapy closer to community settings.
The Access Challenge
Despite Kite (search)'s manufacturing success, significant barriers to patient access remain. Levy noted a stark statistic: "Unfortunately, today, only about 2 out of 10 eligible patients obtain CAR-T." Addressing this gap is a top priority for the organization, with efforts focused on expanding treatment centers, improving the referral ecosystem, and ensuring timely manufacturing and delivery.
Beyond Blood Cancers: The Solid Tumor Frontier
Gilead and Kite (search) are also pushing cell therapy into solid tumors, one of oncology's most challenging frontiers. Levy highlighted work in recurrent glioblastoma (search), where the company is "exploring multi-targeted armored CAR-T approaches in what is one of the most challenging settings in oncology."
Derynck emphasized that the combined ADC and cell therapy platforms give Gilead a differentiated advantage: "We're not limited to single modality or a single tumor type. We can pursue the right technology for the right biology across both solid tumors and hematologic cancers."
Patient-Centered Development
Berger stressed that Gilead's approach is deeply rooted in patient engagement, a practice carried forward from the company's HIV legacy. "We're trying to get patient input into our clinical trials — we're trying to work with patients to understand: what are the real unmet medical needs? What do we want to address?" he said.
This patient-first philosophy, combined with what Derynck called "precision biological approaches that aim to very selectively kill cancer cells with minimal impact on healthy tissue," forms the scientific and ethical foundation of Gilead's oncology strategy as it pursues its goal of becoming a dominant force in cancer care.