Post by Dr. Philipp Berndt

From Berlin lab to ~$5B exit: the rise of Tubulis GmbH and its acquisition by Gilead Sciences Some biotech stories feel distant. This one doesn’t. During my time as a doctoral fellow at the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP), I overlapped with Dominik Schumacher. Not in the same group, but close enough to see early ideas forming in real time. In the lab of Christian Hackenberger, the focus was always on precise protein modification. Even back then, it didn’t feel purely academic. It felt like something that could actually become medicine. That intuition turned out to be right. Tubulis was founded in 2019 to translate these concepts into next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), tackling one of oncology’s biggest challenges: delivering highly potent drugs with precision and safety. What followed was fast and telling. Alongside its scientific progress, Tubulis built strong financial momentum. The company raised a €10.7M Series A to establish its ADC platform, followed by a multi-stage Series B culminating in an upsized €128M Series B2 in 2024 to advance its clinical pipeline. In 2025, Tubulis closed a Series C of €308M, later expanded to approximately €344M, making it one of the largest private biotech financings in Europe and a strong signal of global investor confidence. A major validation step followed through a strategic partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb. By 2025, the first ADC from this collaboration had entered clinical trials, marking a fast transition from platform to patient. Then came the defining moment: the acquisition by Gilead Sciences in April 2026, in a deal worth up to $5B. For a company that started from academic work in Berlin, that number is striking. But it is what it represents that matters more. It shows how quickly truly differentiated science can scale when paired with the right vision, execution, and partners. Now, with Gilead’s global reach, it is only a matter of time before these innovations extend to markets like Japan, where advanced oncology therapies are rapidly adopted. For me, this story is a reminder: the people you briefly cross paths with in academia may go on to change entire fields. And the ideas developed at the bench can, with the right push, make their way all the way to patients. Source: Gilead Sciences press release (April 2026) https://lnkd.in/gr7fVgjy