Merrimack Pharmaceuticals was awarded $2.44 million to support research on 10 of its cancer programs through the Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project, a grant program created as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 to advance research in areas of unmet medical need. Merrimack received one of the largest grants awarded to the companies in Massachusetts and was one of the top ten recipients across the United States.
"We are very grateful for this grant from the Department of Health and Human Services," said Robert Mulroy, Merrimack's President and Chief Executive Officer. "This program is an important initiative to spur biomedical innovation and improve healthcare. Merrimack will use the grants to continue to advance our therapeutic and diagnostic product candidates in an effort to improve the quality of care for cancer patients everywhere."
The grant was awarded to projects based on three key criteria. The potential to:
- produce new therapies;
- reduce long-term health care costs;
- significantly advance the goal of curing cancer within 30 years.
Merrimack's three clinical stage cancer programs, MM-121, a novel, first-in-class ErbB3 (HER3) antagonist, MM-111, a novel bi-specific antibody targeting ErbB2/ErbB3 (HER2/HER3) and MM-398, a nanoliposomal formulation of irinotecan, were among the programs granted an award along with three preclinical and four research stage cancer programs.
Merrimack is distinguished by the company's Network Biology-driven approach to drug discovery and development - a combination of biology, engineering and computing which aids in gaining a better understanding of the biology underlying cancer growth. Merrimack's novel platform has the potential to deliver therapeutics paired with diagnostics with the long term goal of understanding a patient's tumor biology in order to correctly assess which treatment regimen he or she should receive.
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