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Merck & Co. has bought into the kind of drug that has emerged as a top threat to its dominant cancer immunotherapy Keytruda.
The company said Thursday it agreed to pay privately-held LaNova Medicines $588 million in cash for worldwide rights to a cancer therapy called LM-299, which is currently in Phase 1 testing in China. LaNova, which is based in Shanghai, could receive up to $2.7 billion in additional payments should the drug hit various development and sales milestones across multiple indications.
The deal makes Merck the latest company to acquire a type of dual-pronged cancer immunotherapy that’s fast become a top target of drugmakers. These so-called bispecific therapies simultaneously home in on the proteins PD-1 and VEGF, which help tumors grow and evade detection from the immune system.
This year, one such drug, ivonescimab, from China-based Akeso and development partner Summit Therapeutics, bested Merck’s Keytruda in a late-stage trial in lung cancer — the first time that’s happened since Keytruda’s arrival a decade ago. Though the results came with notable limitations and are unlikely to support a U.S. approval, since then, an array of drugmakers have either acquired PD-1 and VEGF-targeting bispecifics or built new companies around them. Just yesterday, BioNTech agreed to pay $800 million to buy biotech Biotheus, giving it a PD-1 and VEGF drug the companies have been co-developing.
Merck has a particularly vested interest in the progress of PD-1 and VEGF bispecifics. Keytruda is the world’s most widely used cancer immunotherapy, having earned 40 approvals since its first in 2014. The drug accounted for $25 billion of Merck’s $60 billion in revenue last year, when it officially became the world’s best-selling medicine.
But there is still room for improvement, as the majority of people don’t durably respond to Keytruda and other drugs like it. Keytruda will also lose patent protection in the U.S. in 2028, after which Merck will be pressed to replace lost revenues.
Merck, for its part, has been leaning on a pipeline of drugs for cancer, heart and immune diseases to cover some of those anticipated losses, as well as a formulation of Keytruda administered via subcutaneous injection instead of intravenously. It’s also been pairing Keytruda with medicines that target VEGF or related pathways. One such combination, with Eisai’s Lenvima, is approved for a few tumor types, though it failed to extend survival in a late-stage trial in lung cancer. The company has “made a substantial investment in that pathway,” said Merck research chief Dean Li, referring to VEGF, on a conference call with analysts last month.