Dou­bling down on the Keytru­da fran­chise, Mer­ck pays $300M and promis­es $5B-plus to part­ner with Ei­sai on its bud­ding can­cer star

Im­pressed by the po­ten­tial of a com­bo fea­tur­ing Keytru­da with Ei­sai’s star can­cer drug Lenvi­ma (lenva­tinib me­sy­late), Mer­ck $MRK has stepped up with $300 mil­lion in cash and a com­mit­ment of more than $5 bil­lion in mile­stones to kick off a full slate of tri­als for the duo.

An oral TKI al­ready ap­proved for thy­roid can­cer and in com­bi­na­tion with everolimus for kid­ney can­cer, Ei­sai not­ed a lit­tle more than a month ago that their drug scored well in a Phase III study for first-line liv­er can­cer. And Mer­ck sees a big fu­ture for this drug tied to Keytru­da, which is now in­volved in more than 700 clin­i­cal tri­als.

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