Prelude Teams Up with Merck For Next-Gen Drug Development

Prelude Therapeutics has reached a significant milestone with its second collaboration with the pharmaceutical powerhouse Merck & Co. This partnership with the $60 billion multinational aims to explore Prelude’s leading cancer treatment, focusing on its interactions with Merck’s renowned immunotherapy. While specific details of the agreement remain under wraps, Prelude officials anticipate providing further insights following the completion of the first phase of the trial later this year.

Collaborations like this are typical in the drug development sector, especially for companies with constrained financial resources, as they allow for shared costs and the potential for greater financial rewards in the search for new therapies. Both Prelude and Merck will maintain the commercial rights to the drugs studied, but Prelude’s Chief Medical Officer, Jane Huang, highlighted the opportunity this collaboration presents to uncover promising results for patients suffering from rare cancers and diseases.

Huang said in a statement, “Through this collaboration of potentially complementary mechanisms, we may have the potential to positively impact clinical outcomes in patients harboring a SMARCA4 mutation, who have previously been known to have limited treatment options.”

This initiative builds on previous research involving Prelude's small-molecule drugs designed to address cancers associated with the SMARCA2 gene, particularly head and neck cancers. Notably, the drug candidate PRT3789 is a pioneering, highly selective degrader of the SMARCA2 protein, which, along with SMARCA4, plays a crucial role in gene regulation through chromatin remodeling. Prelude has indicated that as many as 70,000 cancer patients in the U.S. and the European Union, who currently face limited treatment options, could benefit from this innovative therapy.

PRT3789 is already part of a collaboration between Prelude and AbCellera, but that partnership is focused on developing new compounds for precision antibody-drug conjugates—targeted therapies designed to deliver drugs directly to cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue. At the same time, Merck is exploring ways to combine treatments with Keytruda, a drug that inhibits proteins from attaching to cancer cells. Keytruda has been a significant success for Merck, projected to generate $25 billion in sales for the company.

Nevertheless, Keytruda's patent is set to expire by 2030, prompting Merck to explore opportunities to launch the drug alongside other therapies to mitigate the impact of this loss. Earlier this year, reports surfaced that Merck was collaborating with Moderna to investigate the potential of combining RNA-based vaccines with Keytruda as a treatment option for melanoma.