Mer­ck en­lists As­tex to search for p53 can­cer drug in ex­pand­ed deal

Mer­ck has ex­pand­ed its on­col­o­gy col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ot­su­ka sub­sidiary As­tex Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to the tune of a $35 mil­lion up­front pay­ment and po­ten­tial mile­stone pay­ments of $500 mil­lion per pro­gram.

As­tex will use its frag­ment-based drug dis­cov­ery plat­form to find small mol­e­cules to tar­get the p53 tu­mor sup­pres­sor pro­tein be­fore hand­ing off the po­ten­tial can­di­dates to Mer­ck for the fund­ing and re­search, de­vel­op­ment and po­ten­tial com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the mol­e­cules.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER