Bristol-Myers Squibb to sell off HIV portfolio to ViiV Healthcare

Bristol-Myers Squibb has announced the planned sale of its HIV research and development portfolio to ViiV Healthcare through two individual agreements.

The company will divest its pipeline of investigational HIV medicines – consisting of a number of programmes at different stages of discovery, preclinical and clinical development – to ViiV, as part of ongoing efforts to refine its strategic focus.

ViiV will make upfront payments totaling $350 million (236.01 million pounds), plus developmental milestone-based fees of up to $518 million, for the clinical assets, as well as up to $587 million for the discovery and preclinical programmes.

Once products are approved and commercialised, ViiV will pay tiered royalties, as well as sales-based milestone payments of up to $750 million for each of the clinical assets and up to $700 million for each of the discovery and preclinical programmes.

Francis Cuss, chief scientific officer at Bristol-Myers Squibb, said: "The agreements with ViiV Healthcare now put the development of these potentially first-in-class compounds into the hands of a global specialist company exclusively dedicated to finding new medicines for people living with HIV."

The company confirmed that this deal will not affect its current marketed HIV medicines, including Reyataz, Evotaz, Sustiva and Atripla.