In a move to safeguard the company’s dominant position in cancer, Merck said Thursday it will license a new cancer drug from LaNova Medicines, a Shanghai-based firm, for $588 million upfront and as much as $2.7 billion in potential milestone payments.
The cancer immunotherapy Keytruda, Merck’s most important product and the best-selling drug in the world with $23 billion in annual sales, is set to lose patent protection and face competition from generic drugmakers as early as 2028, and investors are already fretting about what will happen at Merck when revenues from the medicine begin to decline.
“At Merck, we continue to assemble a strong and diversified oncology pipeline spanning differentiated mechanisms and multiple modalities,” said Dean Li, the president of Merck Research Laboratories, in a statement. “This agreement adds to Merck’s growing oncology pipeline and we look forward to advancing LM-299 with speed and rigor for patients in need.”
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