Zhitong Finance and Economics learned that C4 Therapeutics (CCCCUS) announced a license and collaboration agreement with Merck KGaA, Germany, to collaborate on the development of targeted protein degraders targeting two key oncogenic protein targets in C4T's internal discovery pipeline. C4T will leverage its proprietary Torpedo platform to discover degraders of oncogenic proteins, and Merck will be responsible for the clinical development and commercialization of drug candidates.
Under the terms of the agreement, C4T will receive an upfront payment of $16 million, and Merck will fund C4T's discovery research work. C4T has the potential to get up to about 7 in the entire collaboration$400 million in discovery, regulatory and commercial milestone payments. It is understood that C4 Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, founded in 2015 and listed on NASDAQ in 2020, committed to the development of targeted protein degradation drugs, and currently has 2 pipelines in the clinical stage.
Andrew Hirsch, President and CEO of C4T, said, "We look forward to working with Merck to leverage our mutual strengths to advance projects in C4T's internal oncology pipeline. The new partnership highlights C4T's differentiated approach to targeted protein degradation and its ability to design novel targeted protein degradation drugs. ”