Merck Sharp and Dohme and Lilly expand Adimab collaborations

Merck Sharp and Dohme and Lilly are to expand their research collaborations with the fully human antibody technology specialist Adimab.

It has been announced that Merck will broaden its access to Adimab's technology to discover and optimise therapeutic antibody candidates, including potentially bispecific antibody candidates, across all disease areas over a three-year period.

Meanwhile, in a separate deal, Lilly will be widening the scope of its partnership with Adimab to include the discovery of multiple bispecific antibodies targeting molecular targets identified by Lilly.

Adimab will receive upfront payments as a result of these new arrangements and is also eligible to be granted preclinical and clinical development milestone payments, as well as royalties on product sales.

Deborah Law, vice-president for biologics discovery at Merck Research Laboratories, said: "At Merck, we look at a lot of technologies and have been impressed with Adimab's output in our previous collaboration."

Adimab was co-founded by Professor Tillman Gerngross, who also helped to establish GlycoFi, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Merck Sharp and Dohme since 2006.