Merck & Co. is rounding out its March deal flurry with an antibody discovery pact that could be worth as much as $838 million.
The New Jersey pharma is tapping Infinimmune to hunt for antibodies for as-of-yet undisclosed targets. The $838 million total comes from an undisclosed upfront payment and future potential milestone payouts, according to a March 31 release. Once Infinimmune identifies a potential antibody under the deal, Merck will have the exclusive right to take over development and commercialization.
Infinimmune’s platform uses a large dataset sourced from human memory B cells, which the company believes makes its antibody candidates already primed to become new drugs.
“By discovering antibodies directly from human immune systems and combining that biology with advanced AI-driven engineering, we can uncover therapeutic opportunities that traditional discovery approaches may not access,” Infinimmune co-founder and CEO Wyatt McDonnell, Ph.D., said in the release. “This collaboration allows us to scale our human-first discovery engine and accelerate the development of differentiated biologics.”
Related
In addition to prospecting for antibodies on behalf of Merck, Infinimmune is also advancing its own preclinical pipeline. The California biotech—which launched in 2022 with $12 million seed financing—has a portfolio that is headed up by an interleukin-22-targeting antibody currently in the works for atopic dermatitis.
Merck’s business development team has been busy this month. Just last week the drugmaker paid $20 million upfront for access to Quotient Therapeutics’ genomics platform, which Merck will use to search for new inflammatory bowel disease targets. The total value of that deal could be as high as $2.2 billion if all milestones are met.
The next day, Merck made an even bigger splash by agreeing to acquire Terns Pharmaceuticals for $6.7 billion. The centerpiece of that deal is TERN-701, an oral candidate for chronic myeloid leukemia. Analysts opined that Merck’s price undervalues Terns, which could leave room for a competing bidder to swoop in.
