MerLion, Merck Enter Drug-Discovery Pact

MerLion Pharmaceuticals, a drug-discovery and development company based in Singapore, and Merck Banyu, a wholly owned Japanese subsidiary of Merck, have signed a two-year discovery and licensing agreement.

Under the new collaboration, MerLion and Banyu will seek to identify new drug candidates from MerLion's natural product sample collection using a range of validated targets in oncology and metabolic disease. MerLion said it has also extended its four-year agreement with Merck based on infectious disease targets.

"This new partnership with Merck Banyu further strengthens MerLion's long relationship with the Japanese pharmaceutical industry," Tony Buss, CEO of MerLion, said. "This, and the extension of our existing collaboration with Merck in anti-infectives, reflects the industrywide recognition that the diversity of chemistry found in natural product samples remains a vital source of new chemical entities for drug discovery."

MerLion said it will receive revenue in the form of upfront payments and predefined milestones and royalties for the licensing of collaborative discoveries.