Eisai and Merck enter cancer research collaboration

Japanese drug major Eisai (TYO: 4523) saw its shares gain 7.15% to 6,732 yen after it announced it had entered into a collaboration with US pharma giant Merck & Co (NYSE: MRK) to study their drug combinations in clinical trials.

The proposed clinical trial collaboration will evaluate the safety, tolerability and efficacy of Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy, pembrolizumab (marketed in the USA under the brand name Keytruda), in combination with Eisai oncology compounds lenvatinib mesylate (a multi-targeting RTK inhibitor marketed in the USA as Lenvima, and eribulin mesylate (a microtubule dynamics inhibitor marketed in nearly 60 countries including Japan, the USA, and Europe under the brand name Halaven, in multiple clinical trials.

The planned studies include a multicenter, open-label Phase Ib/II study of lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab in select solid tumors and an open-label, single-arm, multicenter Phase Ib/II study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of eribulin in combination with pembrolizumab in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. Eisai and Merck will establish a Joint Development Committee to oversee clinical development activities. The studies are expected to begin in the second half of 2015. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.