Mer­ck has signed a re­search deal with 4D Phar­ma to use its Mi­croRX plat­form to turn liv­ing bac­te­ria in­to vac­cines.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion comes in the nascent field of “live bio­ther­a­peu­tics” – a term the FDA us­es to de­scribe liv­ing or­gan­isms, gen­er­al­ly bac­te­ria, used as med­i­cine. 4D Phar­ma, a small biotech based in Leeds, UK, builds its LBP by ex­tract­ing bac­te­ria from a healthy donor and putting it in a cap­sule pa­tients swal­low.

The deal al­lows 4D Phar­ma to cause New Jer­sey-based Mer­ck to pur­chase $5 mil­lion of or­di­nary 4D Phar­ma shares dur­ing the first year. There’s an undis­closed cash pay­ment to 4D, along with $347.5 mil­lion in op­tions hing­ing on de­vel­op­ment and reg­u­la­to­ry mile­stones, and roy­al­ties.

But there’s no word yet on what those in­di­ca­tions are. Or what pre­cise­ly these vac­cines are. 

Al­though 4D Phar­ma talks about de­vel­op­ing  “live bio­ther­a­peu­tic vac­cines” with Mer­ck, the FDA’s 2016 guid­ance on LBP clin­i­cal tri­als specif­i­cal­ly de­fines LBPs as some­thing that con­tains liv­ing or­gan­isms, is used to pre­vent or cure hu­man ail­ments, and “is not a vac­cine.”  

It ap­pears, though, that this is a new de­vel­op­ment and not an at­tempt by ei­ther com­pa­ny to re­brand the more es­tab­lished pre­ven­ta­tive LBP tar­gets. To its long list of pipeline tar­gets, the com­pa­ny very re­cent­ly – the Way­back Ma­chine on­ly lets us check as re­cent­ly as Ju­ly 15, when it was not yet there – added “MRx Vac­cines.” It ap­pears with the short­est line, and links to the mes­sage: “We have en­tered a re­search col­lab­o­ra­tion and op­tion agree­ment with MSD, util­is­ing the Mi­croRx plat­form to dis­cov­er and de­vel­op LBPs as nov­el vac­cines.”

LBPs are cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed as a pre­ven­ta­tive treat­ment for bac­te­r­i­al vagi­nosis, necro­tiz­ing en­te­ro­col­i­tis, and al­ler­gic rhini­tis. 4D is cur­rent­ly in­volved in four clin­i­cal tri­als, study­ing Blau­tix in IBS, MRx0518 in com­bi­na­tion with Mer­ck’s Keytru­da on sol­id tu­mors and MRx0518 in a neoad­ju­vant set­ting for sol­id tu­mors, and MRx-4DP0004 for asth­ma.

Daria Hazu­da, Mer­ck’s VP of in­fec­tious dis­eases and vac­cines dis­cov­ery re­search added, “we hope to gain mean­ing­ful in­sights in­to the role for the host mi­cro­bio­me in mod­u­lat­ing the im­mune re­sponse and ul­ti­mate­ly pro­tec­tion con­ferred by vac­cines.”

The Endpoints News team is continuing to track IPO filings for 2021, and we’ve designed a new tracker page for the effort.

Check it out here: Biopharma IPOs 2021 from Endpoints News

You’ll be able to find all the biotechs that have filed and priced so far this year, sortable by quarter and listed by newest first. As of the time of publishing on Feb. 25, there have already been 16 biotechs debuting on Nasdaq so far this year, with an additional four having filed their S-1 paperwork.

Roche and Genentech have committed $53 million to back a 10-year quest aimed at going back to the drawing board to use new technology and fresh scientific insights to generate a pipeline of drugs for neurological diseases.

Researchers from both Roche and its big South San Francisco hub — mixing teams from gRED and pRED this time — will mix it up with the scientists drawn together for the Weill Neurohub — formed in 2019 as a joint research partnership involving UCSF, Berkeley and the University of Washington — in an exploration of the field to develop new therapies for some of the toughest diseases in drug R&D: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, ALS and autism.