ARTICLE | Deals
On heels of Parkinson’s readout, Cerevance enters Alzheimer’s discovery deal with Merck
Pharma pays $25M up front to use target discovery platform as privately-held Cerevance plots path forward for wholly-owned clinical program
August 9, 2022 9:22 PM UTC
More than two years after its last private funding, neurodegeneration company Cerevance is fortifying its cash position via a target discovery deal with Merck that also gives the pharma a preclinical program for Alzheimer’s disease.
Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK) will pay $25 million up front to six-year-old Cerevance Inc. to use the biotech’s Nuclear Enriched Transcript Sort sequencing (NETSseq) platform to discover Alzheimer’s disease treatments. Spun out of the Rockefeller University, the platform is designed to study post-mortem tissue samples from diseased brains and identify circuit-specific neurological targets...