Astex Pharmaceuticals knows a thing or two about working with a Big Pharma from lab to blockbuster status. Now, the British company is adding another line to a Merck & Co. cancer collaboration.
Cambridge, U.K.-based Astex will receive $35 million upfront with $500 million per program available down the line in milestones, plus royalties, to generate leads on new small-molecule modulators for a number of targets. Astex will use its fragment-based drug discovery platform to find new therapeutics that have activity toward the p53 tumor suppressor protein. The candidates will then be handed off to Merck for further optimization and preclinical development, according to a Tuesday press release.
There’s no cap on the number of targets the companies will turn up through the collaboration. Merck will assume responsibility for future research and development as well as commercialization of any candidates it picks.
Astex has a long history of working with Big Pharma, having collaborated with the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research on Kisqali through a research collaboration in the mid-2000s. The breast cancer therapy is still a blockbuster, bringing in $1.2 billion for Novartis for full-year 2022. The partnership with Astex was worth $520 million back in 2006.
Merck, of course, has industry gem Keytruda in its portfolio but has been on the hunt for new candidates to fill the pipeline. The New Jersey pharma—known as MSD outside the U.S. and Canada—signed a deal with Astex in 2020 to work on therapies for KRAS mutated cancers. The deal included $50 million upfront and approximately $2.5 billion contingent on certain milestones, plus royalties.
Astex, a unit of Japan-based Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, received FDA approval in 2020 for Inqovi, an oral version of a chemotherapy drug that previously required time-consuming infusions.