Merck (MSD) has announced that it is buying Terns Pharmaceutical in a deal with an approximate equity value of $6.7 billion.
Key to the deal is Tern's lead candidate, TERN-701, an oral drug in phase 1/2 development for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). A novel investigational allosteric BCR::ABL1 tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), it is being trialed in patients with Philadelphia chromosome-positive (Ph+) chronic phase CML. Patients in the CARDINAL clinical trial have all previously experienced treatment failure, a suboptimal response, or treatment intolerance with at least one TKI.
In , the U.S. FDA granted Orphan Drug designation for TERN-701 for the treatment of CML.
In clinical trials to date, the drug has shown promising activity, with encouraging rates of major molecular response and deep molecular response observed by week 24. Importantly, this includes responses in patients with high disease burden who previously received multiple lines of therapy, including many who were treated with an allosteric TKI. In addition, most of the treatment-emergent adverse events have been low grade, with few severe adverse events and discontinuations.