Merck Serono, the biopharmaceutical business of Merck, and the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), a public-private partnership, has signed an agreement under which Merck Serono will obtain the rights to the investigational antimalarial compound DDD107498 from MMV.

The drug originated from a collaboration between MMV and the University of Dundee Drug Discovery Unit, led by Prof. Ian Gilbert and Dr. Kevin Read. The objective of the clinical program for the drug is to demonstrate whether the investigational compound exerts activity on a number of malaria parasite lifecycle stages and whether it remains active in the body long enough to offer potential as a single-dose treatment against the most severe strains of malaria.

Source: MMV