American pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. (NYSE:MRK) is considering signing development agreements with five Israeli companies. Merck did not disclose additional details about the companies’ identities, but sources inform “Globes” that one company is developing a cancer treatment platform, two are developing treatments for infectious diseases and diseases of the central nervous system.
The agreements are part of Merck’s project, launched in August 2001, to “examine scientific innovations in growth markets”. Merck Research Laboratories emeritus for external scientific affairs Dr. Lewis Mandel, Ph.D., who heads the project, said Merck examined activities in nine countries that would become important players for pharmaceutical discovery and development in the coming decade.
Mandel said Merck was mainly seeking drugs based on small molecules, “preferably at the very early development stage.” He said 190 proposals had been received from Israel. After screening, five proposals remained, which might become the basis for cooperation or collaboration with Merck Research Laboratories. Merck rejects 99% of the 2,000 development proposals it receives each year. Based on this statistic, Merck will probably sign a joint development agreement with only one company.
Mandel said no official deadline had been set for deciding the winner. “Each opportunity has its own timetable and milestones, but we’ll probably decide within 12 months. A scientific reason will be given for the rejections,” he said. He added that a comprehensive analysis of all the countries surveyed would be made in December 2004, on the basis of which Merck would decide where to focus an active search for molecules. Mandel said he thought Israel and Australia would win.
Mandel explained that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find new molecules, hence Merck’s need for partnerships. Moreover, companies are already covering the leading drug development countries, such as the UK, France, Japan, and Canada, which was why Merck was looking at second-tier countries like Israel. “Israel has two main disadvantages, characteristic of growth markets” he said. “One is the projects’ early life-strage; laboratory viability studies have sometimes not yet been conducted. The second is that the chemical pharmaceutical sector is relatively limited in Israel, compared with biology.”
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on May 18, 2003