Af­ter go­ing ‘crazy’ over the sci­ence, Mer­ck signs up a new part­ner in the hunt for an HIV cure

Less than a year af­ter ink­ing a $100 mil­lion li­cens­ing deal with Ger­man gi­ant Bay­er, Dew­point Ther­a­peu­tics has scored an­oth­er big-time con­tract, this time with Mer­ck. And this col­lab­o­ra­tion came to­geth­er in a par­tic­u­lar­ly un­usu­al fash­ion.

Mer­ck and Dew­point have agreed on a part­ner­ship that will pro­vide the phar­ma gi­ant with ac­cess to the Boston-based biotech’s bio­mol­e­c­u­lar con­den­sate tech­nol­o­gy in or­der to de­vel­op treat­ments, and po­ten­tial­ly a cure, for the HIV virus. Dew­point, in turn, will re­ceive up to $305 mil­lion in up­front and mile­stone pay­ments as well as roy­al­ties for any ap­proved prod­uct.

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