In a block­buster en­dorse­ment of its gene-edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy, Gilead $GILD has tapped Sang­amo’s zinc fin­ger nu­cle­ase ap­proach to tai­lor­ing its next-gen pro­grams for off-the-shelf as well as per­son­al­ized ther­a­pies. And Gilead, which seized a lead­ing spot in the CAR-T world with its ac­qui­si­tion of Kite, is fronting the deal with $150 mil­lion in cash and slight­ly more than $3 bil­lion in mile­stones.

The deal gives Gilead an ex­clu­sive po­si­tion with Sang­amo $SG­MO, which has been work­ing with its ZFN gene edit­ing tech for years. While CRISPR/Cas9 and TAL­ENs have fig­ured promi­nent­ly in gene edit­ing, with ri­val off-the-shelf CAR-T de­vel­op­er Cel­lec­tis ini­tial­ly pre­fer­ring TAL­ENs, Sang­amo has been mak­ing some dra­mat­ic ad­vances in re­cent months.

Gilead, mean­while, sig­naled with its ac­qui­si­tion of Cell De­sign that it was se­ri­ous about in­vest­ing big in CAR-T 2.0, and few pro­grams are as am­bi­tious as the move to use healthy donor cells to cre­ate a sim­pler, less ex­pen­sive al­ter­na­tive to the pricey per­son­al­ized ther­a­pies now hit­ting the mar­ket from No­var­tis and Gilead.

And it’s will­ing to con­tin­ue to in­vest heav­i­ly through the de­vel­op­ment process. In a fil­ing with the SEC to­day, Sang­amo not­ed:

Of this amount (for mile­stones), ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.26 bil­lion re­lates to the achieve­ment of spec­i­fied re­search, clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and first com­mer­cial sale mile­stones, and ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.75 bil­lion re­lates to the achieve­ment of spec­i­fied com­mer­cial sales-based mile­stones if an­nu­al world­wide net sales of Li­censed Prod­ucts reach spec­i­fied lev­els. Each de­vel­op­ment- and sales-based mile­stone pay­ment is payable (i) on­ly once for each Li­censed Prod­uct, re­gard­less of the num­ber of times that the as­so­ci­at­ed mile­stone event is achieved by such Li­censed Prod­uct, and (ii) on­ly for the first ten times that the as­so­ci­at­ed mile­stone event is achieved, re­gard­less of the num­ber of Li­censed Prod­ucts that may achieve such mile­stone event. In ad­di­tion, Sang­amo will be en­ti­tled to re­ceive es­ca­lat­ing, tiered roy­al­ty pay­ments with a per­cent­age in the sin­gle dig­its based on po­ten­tial fu­ture an­nu­al world­wide net sales of Li­censed Prod­ucts. These roy­al­ty pay­ments will be sub­ject to re­duc­tion due to patent ex­pi­ra­tion, en­try of biosim­i­lar prod­ucts to the mar­ket and pay­ments made un­der cer­tain li­cens­es for third-par­ty in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty.

Now both No­var­tis $NVS — work­ing with CRISPR tech from In­tel­lia Ther­a­peu­tics and Cari­bou Bio­sciences — and Cel­gene $CELG, which just bought out Juno, have been served no­tice that the next-gen tech race in CAR-T is in full swing. How will they re­spond?

The deal marks the sec­ond big tech en­dorse­ment for Sang­amo in a lit­tle more than a month. Pfiz­er start­ed the year by ink­ing an al­liance with the gene edit­ing crew on ALS, build­ing on their orig­i­nal pact for he­mo­phil­ia A. Pfiz­er had ear­li­er al­lied it­self with Spark in a move to get in­to the lead of the gene ther­a­py field, work­ing on he­mo­phil­ia B.

“The emer­gence of gene edit­ing as a tool to ed­it im­mune cells holds promise in the de­vel­op­ment of ther­a­pies with po­ten­tial­ly im­proved safe­ty, ef­fi­ca­cy and ef­fi­cien­cy,” said Gilead CEO John Mil­li­gan in a state­ment. “We be­lieve Sang­amo’s zinc fin­ger nu­cle­as­es pro­vide the op­ti­mal gene edit­ing plat­form, and we look for­ward to work­ing with Sang­amo to ac­cel­er­ate our ef­forts to de­vel­op next-gen­er­a­tion au­tol­o­gous cell ther­a­pies, as well as al­lo­gene­ic treat­ments that can be ac­cessed more con­ve­nient­ly in the hos­pi­tal set­ting for peo­ple liv­ing with can­cer.”

Im­age: Gilead CEO John Mil­li­gan. bloomberg via get­ty im­ages