Pearl Bio Enters Collaboration with Merck for Discovery of Innovative Engineered Biologics
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Pearl Bio, a synthetic biology company supported by Khosla Ventures, has announced a significant partnership today with Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada. The collaboration involves a license, collaboration, and option agreement aimed at discovering biologic therapies incorporating non-standard amino acids. This alliance is further fortified by the extensive expertise and patent portfolio acquired from the laboratories of scientific co-founders, Farren Isaacs (Yale) and Michael Jewett (Stanford). These labs specialize in utilizing Genomically Recoded Organisms (GROs) to encode synthetic chemistries, opening avenues for entirely new categories of multi-functionalized biologics with customizable properties.
Initially, the collaboration will concentrate on discovering and advancing biologic therapies for cancer treatment, leveraging Pearl’s exclusive GRO technology. This includes their unique capability to operate in both cell-based and cell-free systems, as well as their proprietary tethered ribosomes, which encode synthetic monomers and target previously inaccessible epitopes.
Amy Cayne Schwartz, Co-Founder and President of Pearl, expressed excitement about showcasing the potential of their technology through the partnership with Merck. The goal is to develop multi-functional therapeutic candidates with customizable properties, addressing significant challenges encountered with biologics.
The agreement stipulates that Pearl stands to receive payments amounting to $1 billion in total, covering upfront, option, and milestone payments, in addition to potential royalties on sales of approved products resulting from the collaboration.
Juan Alvarez, Vice President of Discovery Biologics at Merck Research Laboratories, expressed Merck's enthusiasm about collaborating with Pearl, a trailblazer in developing recoded organisms, to produce innovative biologics enabled by synthetic chemistries.
Source: businesswire.com
