September 18, 2014
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Drug giant Merck KGaA (MRK) has been reaching out to other pharmaceutical companies in the hopes of forming a partnership to help study and market its new cancer immunotherapy drug, the company said Thursday.
“We have initiated a competitive process to select the best partner for the global co-development and co-commercialization of our anti-PD-L1 compound,” Stefan Oschmann, the head of Merck’s pharmacy units,” said in a statement on Thursday.
“We are currently in advanced discussions with major oncology players and aim to reach an agreement by year-end,” he said.
The German drugs and chemicals maker said it will be partnering on the development of its anti-PD-L1 agent, an immuno-oncology therapy that it hopes will attack and destroy cancerous tumors.
Merck’s main competitors in the field are Swiss-based Roche (RHHBY), AstraZeneca (AZN) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), all of which are taking a stab at the multi-billion dollar cancer therapeutics market.
In the same statement, Merck said that if clinical trials go well, it would be investing an additional $168 to $192 million in developing cheaper generic versions of biosimilar drugs, adding to a previous figure of $128 million slotted for the project.
