MSD – known as Merck & Co in the US and Canada – and Astex Pharmaceuticals have expanded their drug discovery collaboration, with the goal of identifying small-molecule candidates with activity towards a tumour suppressor protein.
The partnership will see Astex apply its fragment-based drug discovery platform to develop therapeutics targeting forms of the p53 tumour suppressor protein. The candidates will then be handed off to MSD for further optimisation and preclinical development.
MSD is granted an exclusive global licence to research, develop, and commercialise candidates arising under the collaboration.
In exchange, Astex will receive an upfront payment of $35m and is eligible for milestone payments totalling approximately $500m per programme, as well as tiered royalties on sales.
Harren Jhoti, president and chief executive officer of Astex, said: “Astex is applying its fragment-based drug discovery capability to design and generate small molecule modulators tailored to a wide range of potentially important therapeutic targets.
“This new alliance builds on our existing productive collaboration and allows us to combine our expertise and assets with MSD’s wide-ranging oncology capabilities.”
George Addona, senior vice president of discovery and translational medicine at MSD, added that the company looks forward to “building on [its] collaboration with the Astex team to advance this potentially impactful area of oncology research”.
MSD announced an exclusive worldwide research collaboration and licence agreement with Astex and its sister company, Taiho Pharmaceutical, at the beginning of 2020.
The partnership centred around developing small-molecule inhibitors against several drug targets, including the KRAS oncogene, which is one of the most mutated genes in human cancers but has proven difficult as a target.
The three companies said they would combine their current small molecule pre-clinical oncology candidates as well as their data knowledge and expertise from their individual research programmes.
Under the terms of the agreement outlined at the time, Astex and Taiho would receive an upfront payment of $50m and would be eligible to receive approximately $2.5bn contingent upon the achievement of preclinical, clinical, regulatory and sales milestones for multiple products arising from the agreement, as well as tiered royalties on sales.