Merck & Co and Marcadia accord

Marcadia Biotech, a privately-held US drug development company, has entered a strategic collaboration with US drug major Merck & Co to jointly discover, develop and commercialize novel biopharmaceutical therapies targeting the glucagon and related receptors for the treatment of diabetes and obesity.

Certain of the Marcadia intellectual property subject to the Merck collaboration was licensed from the Indiana University Research and Technology Corp, and the company sponsors ongoing discovery research at the Indiana University Chemistry Department in Bloomington, Indiana, in the therapeutic area of metabolic diseases.

"Marcadia has generated a unique collection of peptide drug candidates with potentially novel therapeutic attributes," said Luciano Rossetti, senior vice president and franchise head, diabetes/obesity and cardiovascular at Merck Research Laboratories.