 | |
| Formerly | Exelixis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1994-2000) |
|---|---|
| Company type | Public |
| Industry | Biotechnology |
| Founded | November 1994; 30 years ago (1994-11) |
| Headquarters | Alameda, California, U.S. |
Key people | Stelios Papadopoulos, Ph.D. (chairman) Michael M. Morrissey, Ph.D. (president &CEO)[1] |
| Revenue |  US$ 1.435 Billion(2021)[2] |
| US$ 0.287 Billion(2021)[3] | |
| US$ 0.231 Billion(2021)[4] | |
| Total assets | US$ 2.61 Billion(2021)[5] |
| Total equity | US$ 2.211 Billion(2021)[6] |
Number of employees | 954(2021)[7] |
| Website | exelixis |
| Footnotes / references [8] | |
Exelixis, Inc. is agenomics-based drug discovery company located inAlameda, California, and the producer ofCometriq, a treatment approved by the U.S.Food and Drug Administration (FDA) formedullary thyroid cancer with clinical activity in several other types of metastatic cancer.
Exelixis was founded in 1994; the scientific founders were Spyridon Artavanis–Tsakonas, at Yale at that time, and Corey Goodman andGerry Rubin who were then at the University of California, Berkeley.[9]George Scangos joined the company as CEO in 1996.[10] The business plan was to usemodel organisms (fruit flies, nematodes, and zebrafish) andfunctional genomics to identify pathways andbiological targets that could be exploited in the fields of agriculture and medicine. It eventually set up a subsidiary, Exelixis Plant Sciences, for the agricultural work.[9]
By 2000 it had left the radical exploratory phase behind and became focused ondrug discovery and had achemical library of 4 million compounds.[9] The company went public that year, after withdrawing its offering the week before; it raised $118 million in a down market.[11]
In 2002 the company signed a broad alliance withGSK to discover new drugs in the fields of cancer, inflammatory diseases, and vascular conditions; GSK paid it $30 million in cash, bought $14 million in stock at twice the market rate, and committed to providing Exelixis with $90 million in research funding; it also offered loan financing of up to $85 million.[12]
By 2002 the company had limited its internal efforts to cancer, and had settled its strategy on discovering and developing drugs that could inhibit targeted small sets oftyrosine kinases that are needed for cancer formation, growth, and metastasis. The sets of TKs had been identified by means of its prior functional genomics work. This approach was controversial at the time; most companies try to selectively target just one protein in their discovery efforts.[9]
In 2006 Exelixis partnered withDaiichi Sankyo on compounds that targetedmineralocorticoid receptors;esaxerenone was part of this collaboration.[13] In 2007, the company partnered itsMEK inhibitor program withGenentech;cobimetinib (at that time XL-518) was part of this collaboration. Exelixis had filed an IND on XL-518 prior to the partnership, committed to funding and running the Phase I trial, and retained rights to co-market it in the US.[14]
In 2008 the company partnered its lead cancer drug candidate, XL-184 (which would become calledcabozantinib) and another cancer candidate, XL-281, withBristol Myers Squibb; BMS returned the rights to XL-184 to Exelixis in 2010 and returned the rights to other drug candidate in 2011.[15][16]
In 2010 Scangos departed as CEO to take over atBiogen[10] and the company appointed Michael M. Morrissey as president and CEO; Morrissey had joined the company in 2000 as Vice President of Discovery Research.[17] At that time the company had eight drugs in clinical trials.[18]
Exelixis' first drug approval came in 2012, when cabozantinib was approved formedullary thyroid cancer, anorphan indication.[19] It was approved in Europe in 2014.[20]
Exelixis invested heavily in exploring cabozantinib in other cancers, betting the future of the company on the drug. In 2014 the drug failed a Phase III trial in prostate cancer, and the company laid off 70% of its employees.[21]
In 2015 Genentech and Exelixis won FDA approval for cobimetinib for certain forms of melanoma.[22]
In March 2016 Exelixis licensed toIpsen worldwide rights (outside the US,Canada, andJapan) to marketcabozantinib.[23]
In April 2016 the FDA granted approval for marketing the tablet formulation as a second line treatment forkidney cancer[24] and the same was approved in Europe in October of that year.[25]
In December 2017, the FDA granted approval for the use of cabozantinib for first line treatment of kidney cancer[26] and in May 2018 approval for first-line treatment was approved in Europe.[27]
In 2023, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) identified Cabometyx (cabozantinib) as one of five high-expenditure drugs that experienced significant net price increases without new clinical evidence to justify the hikes. Specifically, Cabometyx's wholesale acquisition cost rose by 7.5%, leading to an additional $86 million in costs to U.S. payers.[28]
