NASH drug in hand, Mer­ck forges ahead with 2-year ex­ten­sion of NGM Bio col­lab­o­ra­tion deal

The past four years of col­lab­o­rat­ing with NGM Bio has de­liv­ered a late-stage NASH drug for Mer­ck, which paid up $20 mil­lion to li­cense the drug just weeks ago. A year be­fore the deal is slat­ed to ter­mi­nate, the phar­ma gi­ant has de­cid­ed it wants two more years to see what NGM’s dis­cov­ery en­gine could come up with.

Not all of the com­pounds will even­tu­al­ly make the cut — in fact Mer­ck is shed­ding an obe­si­ty pro­gram that failed to im­press in Phase I — but the part­ners have been able to bond over a “mu­tu­al com­mit­ment to sci­en­tif­ic ex­cel­lence and the pur­suit of nov­el mean­ing­ful ther­a­peu­tics,” said Joe Miletich, Mer­ck’s SVP of pre­clin­i­cal and ear­ly de­vel­op­ment.

Endpoints News

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.