MSD taps Quotient for IBD drug targets in $2.2bn deal

MSD is paying $20 million upfront to activate an alliance with Flagship Pioneering's Quotient Therapeutics that will focus on finding new therapeutic targets in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

The deal also puts Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Quotient in line for development, regulatory and commercial milestones that could drive the value of the alliance up to $2.2 billion.

MSD (known as Merck & Co in the US and Canada) is the latest in a series of big pharma groups seeking to deploy Quotient's target discovery platform, which is focused on the use of somatic genomics – the study of genetic variation at the cellular level – to discover therapeutics informed by new links between genes and disease.

The company has built its platform on the understanding that cells accumulate random genetic changes in their DNA, some of which can make a cell resistant or vulnerable to disease, while others can cause disease.

Using proprietary single-molecule, genome sequencing technology, Quotient is building a library of natural genetic variations that can be used to discover gene variants that are beneficial, neutral, or pathological.

Dr Marc Levesque, head of discovery at Merck Research Laboratories, said that Quotient's approach "has the potential to provide us with unique biological insights into genomic changes that are naturally occurring within patients with IBD," which includes ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease.

"Millions of people globally are living with this disease, and no disease-modifying treatments are currently available," he added.

IBD is a key R&D focus for MSD, whose pipeline in the indication is currently led by tulisokibart, an anti-TL1A antibody in phase 3 for UC and Crohn's and mid-stage trials for other inflammatory diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis.

Since emerging from stealth two and a half years ago, Quotient has also disclosed a 2024 agreement with Pfizer looking for somatic mutations involved in cardiovascular and renal diseases – part of Flagship's strategic-level, $7 billion alliance with the pharma group – and a 2025 project with GSK looking at new targets for respiratory and liver diseases.

The biotech's recently appointed chief executive, Rahul Kakkar, said: "The combination of Merck's deep drug development and global commercial expertise with our unbiased, disease- and modality-agnostic somatic genomics platform could redefine how IBD is understood and treated."