Merck reaches 2 year deal over AVEO cancer Human Response Prediction

Merck & Co has reached a second oncology based collaborative agreement with Aveo Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company with a focus on the discovery and development of new cancer medicines.

The agreement has been reached over AVEO’s Human Response Prediction platform for identifying patient populations likely to be responsive to investigational cancer drugs currently being developed by Merck.

The collaboration will focus on identifying correlations between genetic profiles that correlate with drug responses to increase the efficiency of Merck’s clinical and market development of the company’s cancer compounds.

Merck and AVEO have worked together for the last two years on the use of AVEO’s genetically defined models for new target discovery and validation. This reached fruition earlier this year when Merck used its option rights to the first novel small molecule target discovered and validated in AVEO’s models and comprehensive cancer biology programme.

“Merck is committed to bringing targeted cancer therapeutics to market,” Stephen H. Friend, MD, Ph.D., Executive Vice President, Advanced Technology and Oncology at Merck Research Laboratories told Newswire.

“AVEO’s Human Response Prediction platform represents a potentially significant advancement for identifying those subgroups of cancer patients who will likely respond to specific drugs, and could improve the efficiency and productivity of oncology drug development,” he added.

The new agreement will grant Merck exclusive rights to the data generated from the two year preclinical studies on select cancer compounds using AVEO’s response system. Financial terms of the deal include an equity investment by Merck in AVEO, annual research funding and the potential for milestone payments.

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