Merck & Co. has signed a clinical trial and supply agreement with Sellas Life Sciences, a Hamilton, Bermuda-headquartered biopharmaceutical company focused on cancer immunotherapies, to target multiple cancer types.

Merck & Co.’s top-selling anti-PD-1 therapy, Keytruda (pembrolizumab), will be administered with Sellas’ Wilms tumor-1 (WT1)-targeting peptide immunotherapeutic agent, galinpepimut-S, in a Phase I/II trial. It will enroll patients in five cancer indications, including both hematologic malignancies and solid tumors.

Keytruda is a top-selling drug for Merck & Co. It had 2016 global sales of $1.4 billion. In the US, the drug is approved for treating various cancers: metastatic melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, head and neck cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, urothelial carcinoma, and gastric cancer.

Source: Sellas Life Sciences