Idera Pharmaceuticals, Inc announced that Merck & Co, Inc has extended its research collaboration with Idera for an additional year. The company and Merck entered into an exclusive license and research collaboration agreement to research, develop and commercialize vaccine products containing the company's investigational agonist compounds targeting Toll-like Receptors (TLR) 7, 8, and 9 in the fields of oncology, infectious diseases and Alzheimer's disease in December 2006. As part of the agreement, the two companies engaged in a two-year research collaboration to generate novel agonists targeting TLR7 and TLR8 incorporating both Merck and Idera chemistry for use in the licensed fields.

"Our two-year research collaboration with Merck scientists has been very productive and has created several novel agonists of TLR7 and TLR8 for potential use in vaccine products," said Sudhir Agrawal, chief executive officer and chief scientific officer, Idera Pharmaceuticals. "We are looking forward to a productive third year of the collaboration to fully capitalize on the accomplishments from the first two years."

"Our close working relationship with Idera continues to yield progress," said Dennis Zaller, executive director of External Basic Research, Merck Research Laboratories. "The extension of this research collaboration underscores our commitment to further evaluating these novel vaccine adjuvants."

Idera Pharmaceuticals develops drug candidates to treat infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, cancer, and respiratory diseases, and for use as vaccine adjuvants.