Proteros biostructures GmbH announced that the company has entered into a second research agreement with Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, USA (known as MSD outside the US and Canada). The new collaboration is aimed at developing small molecule compounds against an additional epigenetic target for the potential treatment of various cancers.
Under the terms of the agreement, Proteros receives an upfront payment and research funding and will be eligible to receive development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments up to $167 million plus tiered royalties. Additional details of the collaboration were not disclosed.
Dr. Torsten Neuefeind, CEO of Proteros commented, “We are pleased to expand our relationship with MSD just one year after starting our first collaboration in epigenetic drug discovery. This new collaboration will benefit from our previous and ongoing work with the team at MSD and we look forward to a further successful partnership, which potentially could transform the treatment of many cancers.”
Epigenetics (outside of genetic) addresses a novel paradigm in the organization of genetic information and covers a broad class of enzymes and hundreds of potential drug targets. Epigenetic changes - unlike genetic alterations - provide the potential to reverse disease processes. Reversing those changes with epigenetic drugs is a fundamentally new opportunity in drug discovery. Proteros’ proprietary nucleosomal epigenetic assay technologies (NEAT) and the structure guided discovery platform allow the opening of gateways to address epigenetic mechanisms for new medicines.