Mer­ck goes all-in on a late-stage NASH drug from NGM as de­vel­op­ment race heats up

Af­ter bet­ting $450 mil­lion in cash on NGM’s R&D ca­pa­bil­i­ties, Mer­ck R&D chief Roger Perl­mut­ter is adding an­oth­er $20 mil­lion ante to pick up rights for a prize NASH drug that will now go in­to its late-stage pipeline.

The ob­ject of Perl­mut­ter’s at­ten­tion is NGM313, an an­ti­body ag­o­nist of the β-Klotho/FGFR1c re­cep­tor com­plex. This drug was at the heart of Mer­ck’s $MRK 2015 deal to bankroll NGM’s R&D op­er­a­tions for 5 years, with Perl­mut­ter’s per­son­al en­dorse­ment that the com­pa­ny was a stand­out.

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