“We’re very excited to get started,” says John McHutchison, Gilead’s chief scientific officer and head of research and development. “The interesting thing is taking various data [and] looking at the immune system in a very unique way,” Mega says. In 2015, Gilead agreed to pay Galapagos Pharmaceuticals, a Belgian drug firm, up to $2 billion for rights to co-develop one such drug, filgotinib. McHutchison says previous efforts to look at white blood cells in these disease have turned up very little light. He was drawn to Verily, he says, by Alphabet’s capacity to generate and process huge amounts of data.

Source: Forbes April 30, 2018 20:03 UTC