Ligand Pharmaceuticals
biopharmaceutical company based out of La Jolla, California
Ligand Pharmaceuticals is an American biopharmaceutical company that focuses on acquiring and developing royalty-generating assets. As of 2024, the company's portfolio included royalty rights to approximately 90 pharmaceutical products across a range of therapeutic areas. Notable products from which Ligand receives royalties include the multiple myeloma (cancer) treatments Kyprolis and Evomela, the kidney disease therapy Filspari, and the pneumococcal vaccine Vaxneuvance. The company also owns the drug development technology platform Captisol.
The company was founded in 1987 as Progenx by venture capitalist Brook Byers; it was renamed Ligand Pharmaceuticals in 1989 and went public in 1992. Following an accounting scandal that led to its delisting from the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2005 (soon after re-listed), the company underwent a major restructuring. Under former CEO John Higgins, who took over in 2007, Ligand shifted its focus from drug development to its current business model of generating revenue from royalties and licensing payments.
Ligand has grown its portfolio primarily through acquisitions, including Pharmacopeia in 2008, CyDex Pharmaceuticals (the developer of Captisol) in 2011, and Pfenex in 2020. In 2019, the company sold its royalty rights to the drug Promacta for $827 million.
Business
Ligand Pharmaceuticals' business is the acquisition of royalty rights to commercially available and in-development pharmaceutical products.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ligand Pharmaceuticals” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.