Merck buzzes Dragonfly for 2nd immunotherapy candidate in $700M pact
- Nov 24, 2021
- 1 min read
Updated: Aug 30, 2022
The dragon is flying high today as Merck hits go on a second immunotherapy candidate from its $700 million pact with Dragonfly Therapeutics. The Big Pharma's buy-in comes just a month after Bristol Myers Squibb licensed its sixth drug from the biotech.
Merck teamed up with Dragonfly for $695 million per program in an October 2018 pact targeting multiple solid tumors. The New Jersey pharma opted into the first TriNKET candidate last November, and the two expanded the collaboration to include infectious diseases and immune disorders on top of the original oncology tie-up.
The partnership revolves around the Massachusetts biotech's TriNKET, or Tri-specific, natural killer (NK) cell engager therapeutics. Essentially, the tech binds to surface proteins expressed on cancer and NK cells.
In disclosing the news Tuesday, Dragonfly's CEO Bill Haney copied and pasted his statement about the collaboration from last year's initial opt-in, noting Merck is a "powerful world leader in drug development" and the biotech is "delighted" the pharma wants to continue with them.
BMS is also happy to keep its partnership with the biotech alive. The Big Pharma signed up for its sixth drug in its own collaboration with Dragonfly last month.
That partnership, originally inked in 2017, has evolved to include hematology malignancies, oncology and neuroinflammation. The TriNKET immunotherapy platform comprises five of the six licensed drugs with the New York Big Pharma.
This is an impressive update that highlights the growing confidence Merck has in Dragonfly’s innovative TriNKET platform. Securing a second immunotherapy candidate under such a significant collaboration demonstrates both the scientific potential of Dragonfly’s technology and the strength of its partnership with Merck. It is exciting to see how advancements in NK cell engager therapies could open new possibilities for treating cancer and other complex diseases. The article also shows how long-term strategic collaborations can create value through shared expertise, research, and development efforts. In many ways, successful biotech partnerships rely on clear performance evaluation and resource allocation, much like the principles discussed in Management Accounting vs Financial Accounting, where internal decision-making and external reporting work together to support organizational…
This collaboration between Merck and DragonflyTX is an interesting example of how biotech partnerships continue to drive innovation in drug discovery and therapeutic development. It’s encouraging to see companies combining expertise and technology to accelerate solutions that could have a meaningful impact on healthcare outcomes.
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The article’s focus on the collaboration between Merck and Dragonfly really stood out because it highlights how partnerships in biotech often depend just as much on long-term research alignment as they do on immediate breakthroughs. It’s interesting how these announcements can sound very technical on the surface, yet behind them there’s usually years of experimentation, uncertainty, and small incremental progress that most people never see.
I also found myself thinking about how industries built around innovation rely heavily on patience, since results in science and technology rarely happen overnight even when expectations are high. It makes me wonder how teams stay motivated during the slower phases when progress is happening quietly in the background rather than through major public milestones.…
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