Northern Virginia, Washington D.C., Brussels, 17 March 2021 – A team from global law firm Hogan Lovells has advised Gilead Sciences on its recently announced collaboration agreement with Merck & Co. to co-develop and co-commercialize innovative long-acting treatments for patients living with HIV.

Under the terms of the agreement, Gilead and Merck will co-develop and co-commercialize long-acting oral and injectable products to treat people living with HIV. The treatments combine Gilead’s proprietary investigational capsid inhibitor, lenacapavir, and Merck’s proprietary investigational nucleoside reverse transcriptase translocation inhibitor, islatravir. Neither treatment is currently approved in any jurisdiction, alone or in combination.

The Hogan Lovells team was led by Co-Head of the firm’s Life Sciences Transactions Practice, partner Cullen Taylor (Northern Virginia), and included partners Lauren Battaglia (Antitrust, Competition, and Economic Regulation, Washington, D.C.) and Falk Schöning (Antitrust, Competition, and Economic Regulation, Brussels), senior counsel Dan Davidson (Tax, Pensions & Benefits, Washington, D.C.), senior associate Nadia Aksentijevich (Intellectual Property, Media, Telecommunications, Washington, D.C.) and associates Rachel Eisen and Estefania McCarroll (both IPMT, Northern Virginia).