Pearl Bio inks deal with Merck to discover novel engineered biologics

Cambridge, USA-based synthetic biology company Pearl Bio, which is backed by Khosla Ventures, has entered a license, collaboration and option agreement with pharma giant Merck & Co (NYSE: MRK), to discover biologic therapies comprising non-standard amino acids.

Bolstering this collaboration is the deep expertise and patent portfolio licensed from the labs of scientific co-founders, Farren Isaacs (Yale) and Michael Jewett (Stanford) for using genomically recoded organisms (GROs) to encode synthetic chemistries, paving the road for entirely new classes of multi-functionalized biologics with tunable properties, Pearl Bio explained.

The collaboration will initially focus on discovery and development of biologic therapies for the treatment of cancer leveraging Pearl’s exclusive GRO technology, unique ability to work in both cell-based and cell-free systems and proprietary tethered ribosomes to encode synthetic monomers and target previously inaccessible epitopes.