Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc has entered into a multi-year research and licensing agreement with Merck & Co. Inc to collaborate on validating and developing therapeutics on three orphan G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) of particular interest to Merck. Arena will utilize its proprietary receptor technologies, CART and Melanophore, as well as the efforts of its medicinal chemistry group, to discover and develop initial molecules on these GPCRs. These efforts are expected to be supplemented by the efforts of chemists and other scientists at Merck. The objective of the research and development effort is to discover and commercialize novel compounds with therapeutic potential on these GPCRs.

Under the collaboration, Arena will receive an upfront payment of $4 million and FTE research funding, and also expects to receive early technical milestones. Should the research result in compounds that enter clinical trials, Arena will receive clinical milestones along with royalties for an FDA approved and commercialized product. In addition to the upfront payment, Arena expects to receive over $10 million during the first year of this collaboration in research funding and milestone payments.

"Arena's broad access to human GPCRs using our proprietary micro-arrays has resulted in the identification of numerous exciting potential disease pathways and drug discovery targets. I am pleased that Merck has chosen to enter into this multi-year collaboration. Using Arena's screening technologies, we have quickly screened our chemical library, identified hits, and made significant progress in optimizing these hits into several chemical lead series. I expect that our Merck collaboration will allow us to more rapidly, and with greater confidence, expand upon and commercialize these discoveries," stated Jack Lief, President and Chief Executive Officer of Arena.

"Merck scientists are very enthusiastic about the opportunity to utilize Arena's cutting edge GPCR technology to further their drug discovery and development efforts," stated Dr. Bennett Shapiro, Executive Vice President Worldwide Licensing and External Research.