Merck Completes Acquisition of Themis

Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, announced the completion of the acquisition of Themis, a privately-held company focused on vaccines and immune-modulation therapies for infectious diseases and cancer. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has granted early termination of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 and Merck has received merger control clearance from the Austrian Federal Competition Authority. Themis is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Merck.

An initial focus of this agreement is acceleration of the development of a measles vector-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate. This candidate is currently in pre-clinical development, and clinical studies are planned to start later in 2020.

Themis developed a broad pipeline of vaccine candidates and immune-modulatory therapies using its innovative measles virus vector platform based on a vector originally developed by scientists at the Institut Pasteur, a world-leading European vaccine research institute, and licensed exclusively to Themis for select viral indications. In March, Themis joined a consortium together with the Institut Pasteur and The Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh, supported by funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), to develop a vaccine candidate targeting SARS-CoV-2 for the prevention of COVID-19.