David Woodhouse, NGM CEO

Mer­ck ex­tends deal to see what else NG­M's dis­cov­ery en­gine can come up with

Once again, Mer­ck is re-up­ping its col­lab­o­ra­tion with NGM Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which for­mer R&D chief Roger Perl­mut­ter per­son­al­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed back in 2015. But not all com­pounds are mak­ing the cut, as the phar­ma says ‘no thank you’ to NGM’s slate of on­col­o­gy can­di­dates.

The ex­ten­sion, which now goes to March 2024, will fo­cus on the de­vel­op­ment of med­i­cines for reti­nal and car­dio­vas­cu­lar and meta­bol­ic (CVM) dis­eases, in­clud­ing heart fail­ure, the part­ners said on Thurs­day. They had an­nounced back in March that they were rene­go­ti­at­ing the terms of the agree­ment to “bet­ter ad­dress their re­spec­tive evolv­ing pri­or­i­ties.”

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