Merck KGaA and Caris Discovery, the therapeutic research arm of Caris Life Sciences, have entered into a multi-year partnership worth over $1.4bn to accelerate the development of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for cancer patients.
ADCs are a class of cancer therapies designed to precisely target and kill tumour cells while sparing healthy ones.
The collaboration will utilise Caris’ artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, patient tissue repository, and ADAPT Biotargeting platform to identify and validate new therapeutic targets.
These can then be pursued by Merck, which will be responsible for preclinical and clinical research as well as the development and commercialisation of the resulting candidates.
Paul Lyne, global head of research unit oncology for the healthcare business sector of Merck KGaA, said: “Through close collaboration with Caris, utilising their unique discovery platform, we complement our internal ADC capabilities to develop novel first-in-class ADCs and ultimately strengthen our potential to expand our oncology portfolio.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Caris will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and research funding, and will be eligible for discovery, development, regulatory and sales-based milestone payments of up to $1.4 billion plus tiered royalties.
Also commenting on the alliance, Brian Lamon, Caris’ chief business officer, said: “We are thrilled to join forces with Merck KGaA to discover targets with the first-in-class potential to advance the next wave of transformational ADC therapeutics.
“This partnership adds to our portfolio of external pipeline programmes and is a strong validation of our highly differentiated, orthogonal multi-omics approach…”
The partnership comes just one month after Merck and C4 Therapeutics entered into an agreement worth $756m to discover two targeted protein degraders.
As part of this collaboration, C4T will utilise its TORPEDO platform to discover degraders targeting critical oncogenic proteins, with Merck responsible for the clinical development and commercialisation of the resulting drug candidates.
Merck also recently announced that it would be paying $45m upfront for licensing rights to Inspirna’s mid-stage candidate currently being evaluated for the second-line treatment of RAS-mutated advanced or metastatic colorectal cancer.