Risks related to our reliance on third parties

We may not be successful in maintaining development and commercialization collaborations, and a collaboration partner may not devote sufficient resources to the development or commercialization of our product candidates. In particular, we are heavily dependent on Gilead for its further development of our product candidate filgotinib. Gilead may not devote sufficient resources or give sufficient priority to the filgotinib program. Our collaborators may not elect to advance the product candidates on which we collaborate. Gilead may not be successful in the further development and commercialization of filgotinib, even when they do devote resources and prioritize their efforts for filgotinib.

The collaboration arrangements that we have established, and any collaboration arrangements that we may enter into in the future, may ultimately not be successful, which could have a negative impact on our business, results of operations, financial condition and growth prospects. It is possible that a collaboration partner may not devote sufficient resources to the development or commercialization of our product candidate or may otherwise fail in development or commercialization efforts, in which event the development and commercialization of such product candidate could be delayed or terminated and our business could be substantially harmed.

We rely on third party suppliers for which a reliable supply of materials is required in order to avoid delays in the drug discovery and development process. Most goods and services are provided by several different suppliers, which mitigates the risk of loss of key suppliers.

Expanding the suppliers’ network can be time consuming as all source suppliers are subject to rigorous ethical and quality control standards. Our suppliers are required to adhere to contractual terms that include anti-bribery and anti-corruption provisions. Our general terms and conditions of purchase also contain a specific clause on anti-bribery and anti-corruption. They can be found on our website.

We have relied on and plan to continue to rely on contract research organizations, or CROs, to monitor and manage data for our preclinical and clinical programs. We and our CROs also rely on clinical sites and investigators for the performance of our clinical trials in accordance with the applicable protocols and applicable legal, regulatory and scientific standards. If CROs do not successfully carry out their contractual duties or obligations or meet quality standards, regulatory requirements or expectations, our clinical trials may be extended, delayed or terminated and we may not be able to obtain regulatory approval for or successfully commercialize our product candidates. We do retain responsibility for all our studies and are required to and have put in place measures to manage, oversee, and control our studies, including the CRO selection process, audits, strong focus on deliverables, timelines, roles & responsibilities, and oversight of conduct of the studies.

We rely on clinical data and results obtained by third parties that could ultimately prove to be inaccurate or unreliable.

As part of our strategy to mitigate development risk, we seek to develop product candidates with validated mechanisms of action and we utilize biomarkers to assess potential clinical efficacy early in the development process. This strategy necessarily relies on clinical data and other results obtained by third parties. If the third-party data and the results that we rely on prove to be inaccurate, unreliable or not applicable to our product candidates, we could make inaccurate assumptions and conclusions about our product candidates and our research and development efforts could be materially adversely affected.