IRBM and Merck announce new agreement in peptide therapeutics

A new agreement in the peptide therapeutics area between integrated drug discovery company, IRBM, and Merck (which is known as MSD outside the US and Canada) has been announced.

“Our R&D peptide group have extensive expertise to help deliver high quality peptide drugs for a wide variety of therapeutic indications,” said Carlo Toniatti, CSO at IRBM. “We are thrilled to be collaborating on this project as part of our mission to advance impactful agents into the clinic.”

“At MSD, evaluating the potential of peptide-based therapeutic candidates is a key part of our discovery strategy,” said Emma Parmee, vice president, Global Discovery Chemistry, MSD “We look forward to continuing to collaborate with our colleagues at IRBM.”

With increasing interest in peptide research over the past 15 years there has also been increased pre-clinical and clinical investments into peptide-based therapeutic candidates for different therapeutic areas as well as technological advances in the field. So much so, in fact, that now, characteristics that were previously considered a liability for peptides are no longer insurmountable obstacles.

For this project, IRBM will be applying its expertise in phage display peptide library design and screening and in chemical peptide synthesis and optimization, to identify potential peptide leads for a specific Merck target.