MRK - Alpine Immune shares rise on clinical trial collaboration agreement with Merck

Alpine Immune Sciences (ALPN) shares rise more than 9% premarket after announcing that it has signed a clinical trial collaboration and supply agreement with Merck (MRK).The collaboration will evaluate the safety and efficacy of Alpine’s ALPN-202 in combination with Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab).The clinical trial, NEON-2, began dosing study participants in June 2021.Preclinical studies of ALPN-202 have successfully demonstrated superior efficacy in tumor models compared to checkpoint inhibition alone, Alpine highlighted."Our prior preclinical studies demonstrated that the combination of ALPN-202 and a PD-1 inhibitor can be particularly advantageous, and this collaboration will greatly enable our ability to pursue this opportunity in the clinic," Stanford Peng, President and Head of R&D of Alpine said.

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Alpine Immune shares rise on clinical trial collaboration agreement with Merck