Mer­ck dou­bles down on AD­Cs with $4B up­front to Dai­ichi Sankyo, go­ing for ‘same in­ten­si­ty’ as megablock­buster Keytru­da

MADRID — Mer­ck is com­mit­ting $4 bil­lion up­front to team up with Dai­ichi Sankyo on a trio of an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates, adding fu­el to a space that’s heat­ing up on block­buster rev­enue, da­ta read­outs and a flur­ry of M&A.

All three pro­grams the two com­pa­nies will be co-de­vel­op­ing and co-com­mer­cial­iz­ing come from Dai­ichi’s DXd plat­form: Pa­tri­tum­ab derux­te­can tar­gets HER3, ifi­natam­ab derux­te­can tar­gets B7-H3 and ralu­do­tatug derux­te­can tar­gets CDH6. Among them, pa­tri­tum­ab is the most ad­vanced and set for a BLA fil­ing by the end of March 2024, while the oth­er two are in Phase I or II.

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