Amunix Announces Licensing Agreement with Merck for ProTIA Immune Activator Platform

On January 3, 2019 Amunix Pharmaceuticals Inc. ("Amunix"), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of novel immuno-oncology therapeutics, reported that it has entered into a licensing agreement with Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, for rights to develop therapeutics against an undisclosed target using Amunix’s proprietary protease-triggered immune activator (ProTIA) technology platform (Press release, Amunix, JAN 3, 2019, View Source [SID1234532423]).

Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo!
Discover why more than 1,500 members use 1stOncology™ to excel in:

Early/Late Stage Pipeline Development - Target Scouting - Clinical Biomarkers - Indication Selection & Expansion - BD&L Contacts - Conference Reports - Combinatorial Drug Settings - Companion Diagnostics - Drug Repositioning - First-in-class Analysis - Competitive Analysis - Deals & Licensing

                  Schedule Your 30 min Free Demo!

"We are very pleased to enter into the collaboration with Merck, an acknowledged leader in the field of novel cancer therapeutics," said Volker Schellenberger, Ph.D., President and CTO of Amunix. "The agreement with Merck is a testament to Amunix’s protein engineering expertise reflected in our ProTIA platform. This powerful new platform technology enables the rapid generation of tumor activatable cytokines, signaling peptides/proteins or immune cell engagers. We look forward to a productive and successful relationship."

"Amunix’s ProTIA technology offers the potential to create novel tumor-targeted molecules for evaluation in our immuno-oncology clinical development programs," said Rob Kastelein, Ph.D., Associate Vice President, Immune-Oncology Discovery, Merck Research Laboratories. "We look forward to working with the Amunix team."

Under terms of the agreement, Amunix will receive an upfront payment from Merck and is eligible to receive payments associated with the achievement of certain developmental milestones as well as royalties on sales of any products derived from the collaboration. Further financial details were not disclosed.