Burned by Alzheimer’s fail­ures, a cau­tious Mer­ck turns to a start­up biotech for some pre­clin­i­cal neu­ro pro­grams

Af­ter play­ing a lead­ing role in prov­ing that the BACE the­o­ry was worth­less in treat­ing Alzheimer’s, Mer­ck is go­ing back to the draw­ing board for new ideas on the neu­ro­sciences. And in the spir­it of its re­newed fo­cus on dis­cov­ery, the phar­ma gi­ant is turn­ing to a biotech start­up called Yu­man­i­ty Ther­a­peu­tics for some fresh, pre­clin­i­cal ideas.

The crux of the deal they an­nounced to­day fo­cus­es on the rights to two of Yu­man­i­ty’s pipeline pro­grams for ALS and fron­totem­po­ral lo­bar de­men­tia. Af­ter work­ing on the pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams to­geth­er, Mer­ck will have the right to con­tin­ue on in­to de­vel­op­ment with a shot at com­mer­cial­iza­tion — if they can get that far.

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