Merrimack Pharma is systematically driven, say analysts

USA-based Merrimack Pharmaceuticals’ (Nasdaq: MACK) recent R&D day (The Pharma Letter April 11) highlighted an impressive pipeline of six clinical stage drug candidates assembled largely through its integrated, systems biology-driven drug discovery and development approach, comment analysts at Edison Equity Research.

These drugs are being tested in 10 patient populations, including one Phase III and nine Phase II studies, with multiple data read-outs in the next year. In their opinion, the relatively modest $470 million enterprise value (EV) and considering the pipeline, Merrimack is an attractive investment proposition.

Merrimack is focussed on exploiting systems biology to identify critical pathways in cancer and design drugs (mostly antibodies) that modulate multiple components at the same time. It then studies these drugs in selected patient populations that are most likely to respond based on its biomarker work. The lead candidate is MM-121, an anti-Erb3 antibody partnered with Sanofi that is in six Phase II studies for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), breast and ovarian cancers. The first cohort reported recently from its Phase II study of MM-121 in NSCLC and failed to show reversal of resistance to erlotinib. However, two more cohorts from the study have yet to report data.