Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Merck Inks Two Immaterial HIV-Space Collaborations


These are small front-end deals, but -- as ever -- you have to put a horse in the race, to have any chance of winning.

Hard to tell at this stage what the odds will be on either of these turning in a Secretariat-like run -- but here's to hoping.

From today's PharmaTimes, then -- a bit -- do go read it all:

. . . .First up, a deal has been signed with Chimerix giving the US major access to CMX157, the former’s lipid acyclic nucleoside phosphonate which has completed Phase I. . . . Chimerix will receive $17.5 million upfront and be eligible to receive up to $151 million in milestones, plus royalties on future sales.

Merck has also signed an agreement with Japan's Yamasa Corp to develop EFdA (4’-ethynyl-2-fluoro-2’-deoxyadenosine), a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor candidate in preclinical studies which has shown antiviral activity toward highly-resistant HIV strains. The company will pay an upfront fee and future milestone payments in return for exclusive worldwide rights; financial details were not disclosed. [Ed. Note: That is so, because the payments are not presently expected to be material to Merck -- approaching $49 billion in annual worldwide sales revenue.]

The New Jersey-based firm also disclosed that it intends to initiate a Phase II study for MK-1439, its own next-generation non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor. . . .

Next-up -- second quarter 2012 earnings call -- on Friday morning, first thing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

FYI, the compound licensed from Yamasa (i.e. EFda) is in fact a flavour agent (note that Yamasa is a soy sauce company). Its ability to act as an inhibitor of HIV reverse transcriptase is a pleasant surprise.