Merck Serono And Sutro Link Arms To Develop ADCs Against Cancer

Merck Serono, Merck KGaA’s biopharmaceutical division, announced its collaboration with Sutro Biopharma to develop antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) and expand Merck Serono’s oncology pipeline.

Antibody drug conjugates are comprised of an antibody linked to a cytotoxic compound. The role of the antibody is to selectively target cancer cells and deliver cytotoxic drugs to destroy them. Both Sutro and Merck consider ADCs to have the potential to fight cancer while sparing healthy tissue, an important factor in cancer therapy.

Under the terms of the partnership, Merck will leverage Sutro’s Xpress CF and Xpress CF+ platforms in a licensing agreement to discover and develop ADCs for several undisclosed targets. Sutro will deliver ADCs for Phase 1 clinical trials, while Merck will take the lead in the clinical development and marketing of any resulting products. Merck Serono will pay an upfront fee to Sutro to support specific R&D activities. Sutro is also eligible to receive R&D as well as regulatory milestones worth around €230 million in addition to royalties. No further financial terms of the agreement were disclosed by either company.

Andree Blaukat, SVP and Head of Translational Innovation Platform Oncology at Merck Serono, said, “We continue to explore opportunities that will allow us to better understand the potential ADCs have in directly targeting cancer cells. This collaboration with Sutro is reflective of our ongoing commitment to advancing innovation that may provide new therapies for patients.”

William J. Newell, CEO of Sutro, said, “Together with Merck KGaA, we will further advance our efforts to develop antibody therapeutics, engineered to deliver a cytotoxic agent to cancer cells. Our technology has been developed to allow loading of an antibody with multiple different agents and to enable a potential higher uptake of the drug in the tumor cell through improved stability of the ADC.”

Earlier this year, Merck’s subsidiary EMD Serono entered a similar collaboration with Mersana Therapeutics to co-develop next-generation ADCs.