Merck & Co pays NicOx SA $6.8M milestone

NicOx SA has received a 5.0 million-euro ($6.8 million) milestone payment from US drug major Merck & Co after the French drug developer initiated the first in a series of planned trials for the first selected drug candidate from their development accord centered on new nitric oxide-donating antihypertensives.

The first trial in the clinical program for this candidate is a Phase I, dose-escalating study in healthy volunteers, which aims to assess safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics of single oral doses, in order to select the dosing regimen for further clinical studies. Merck is responsible for funding and performing the development of this compound going forward. Including this recently-announced 5.0 million milestone payment, NicOx will have received 19.2 million euros from Merck under their current agreement, of which 10.0 million euros will have been since the beginning of 2007. NicOx also stands to get an additional 269.0 million euros in milestones and Merck will pay NicOx industry-standard royalties on the sales of products that result from the agreement. Furthermore, NicOx has the option to co-promote products that result from the agreement, on a fee-for-detail basis, to specialist physicians in the USA and certain major markets in the European Union.