Gilead Sciences has signed a deal with the Danish biotechnology company Genmab to exclusively license a so-called bispecific antibody technology to treat HIV, plus an option to assume another exclusive license of such technology, FierceBiotech reports.

Gilead is paying $5 million at the outset and has pledged up to $277 million to hit certain milestones in developing this treatment.

Gilead is already a major player in the HIV treatment market and is flush with cash from sales of its blockbuster and expensive hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatments Sovaldi (sofosbuvir), Harvoni (ledipasvir/sofosbuvir) and Epclusa (sofosbuvir/velpatasvir).

A bispecific antibody is one that binds to two targets. Gilead and Genmab have not revealed which two targets are the focus of the technology under development.

The commercial agreement between the companies began two years ago, but at the time, Genmab revealed only that it had entered a research collaboration with an “undisclosed biotechnology company.”

To read the FierceBiotech article, click here.

To read a press release about the purchase, click here.