Merck selects Idera Pharmaceuticals' TLR agonists for evaluation, use as vaccine adjuvant candidates

Idera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: IDRA) today announced that Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, has selected several novel Toll-like Receptor (TLR) agonists targeted to TLR7, TLR8 or TLR9 for evaluation and use as vaccine adjuvant candidates under the companies' collaboration and license agreement.

“Collaborations such as this are essential as we seek to evaluate new innovative approaches to vaccine discovery and development.”

"We are very pleased to have created multiple novel TLR agonists for Merck's exclusive evaluation and use as vaccine adjuvants," commented Sudhir Agrawal, D Phil, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Idera. "Our chemistry-based approach for creating TLR-targeted compounds has allowed us to achieve the objective of generating a broad range of TLR-targeted agonists, each with a unique immune response profile. We look forward to Merck's continued development of these compounds."

"We continue to make progress in our license and research agreement with Idera," said John Shiver, vice president of vaccines discovery at Merck. "Collaborations such as this are essential as we seek to evaluate new innovative approaches to vaccine discovery and development."