Merck & Co pays Rigel a milestone

Rigel Pharmaceuticals has announced that it has received a milestone payment from fellow USA-based Merck & Co, as part of their collaboration to investigate ubiquitin ligases, a new class of drug targets, to find treatments for cancer and, potentially, other diseases.

Rigel is investigating and characterizing the ubiquitin ligase system for the discovery and development of potential new therapeutics. The collaboration combines Rigel's capabilities in ubiquitin ligases with Merck's molecular profiling technology and downstream clinical infrastructure to explore this promising new class of drug targets.

"We believe this is one of the largest dedicated efforts focused on ligases by a pharmaceutical or biotech enterprise and it is proving to be a highly-productive collaboration exploring ligases and potential therapeutics in cancer," said Donald Payan, executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Rigel.