Merck to Buy OncoImmune Amid Covid-19 Vaccine Development
November 23 2020 - 7:14AM
Dow Jones News
By Dave Sebastian
Merck & Co. is buying the biopharmaceutical company
OncoImmune, which has reported positive results from a late-stage
study of a coronavirus vaccine candidate, for $425 million in
cash.
The acquisition is the big drugmaker's latest in its catch-up in
the most important vaccine chase in modern history. Earlier Monday,
AstraZeneca PLC and the University of Oxford said their Covid-19
vaccine was as much as 90% effective in preventing infections
without serious side effects in large clinical trials, and a shot
created by Moderna Inc. and one jointly made by Pfizer Inc. and
BioNTech SE were found to be more than 90% effective in their own
late-stage trials.
Under the deal, expected to close by the end of the year,
OncoImmune shareholders would be eligible for milestone- and
sales-based payments, the companies said Monday. OncoImmune will
also spin off an entity involving certain rights and assets
unrelated to the vaccine to a new entity owned by existing
shareholders before the acquisition, with Merck investing $50
million and becoming a minority shareholder in it, the companies
added.
Patients with severe or critical Covid-19 who were treated with
a single dose of OncoImmune's vaccine candidate, known as CD24Fc,
had a 60% higher probability of improvement than those treated with
the placebo, OncoImmune said of its interim analysis of data from
203 participants, or 75% of the planned enrollment in its phase 3
clinical trial. The dose reduced the risk of death or respiratory
failure by more than 50%, the Rockville, Md., company added.
Merck, based in Kenilworth, N.J., is a longtime maker of
vaccines and antivirals, including human papillomavirus shot
Gardasil. The company in September said it had begun testing one of
its experimental Covid-19 vaccine candidates in healthy volunteers.
It laid out a Covid-19 vaccine program in late May, at a time when
several rivals had developed vaccines and begun testing them on
healthy volunteers.
For the vaccine, Merck in May said it was acquiring privately
held Austrian company Themis Bioscience. The vaccine was developed
by the French research nonprofit Institut Pasteur and licensed to
Themis. Merck's other coronavirus vaccine effort takes the form of
a partnership with the scientific-research organization IAVI, whose
experimental vaccine uses the same technology that is the basis for
Merck's Ebola Zaire virus vaccine.
Health authorities have eyed vaccines as the antidote needed for
the world to begin returning to normal. They are crucial to ensure
that enough people are protected against the virus so it can't
spread easily, even to those who aren't immune. Some 200 Covid-19
vaccines are in development around the world, according to the
World Health Organization, each one promising to protect people
from the deadly coronavirus and allow them to go back to work and
school. Nearly 50 candidates, based on different technologies, are
in clinical trials.
Write to Dave Sebastian at dave.sebastian@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 23, 2020 06:59 ET (11:59 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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