Merck in talks to buy Harpoon Therapeutics for about $700m - report

Merck & Co is reportedly in advanced talks to buy cancer drugmaker Harpoon Therapeutics for about $700m.

Bloomberg cited people familiar with the matter as saying that a deal could be announced within days assuming talks don’t fall apart. It was understood that Merck is discussing paying roughly $23 a share for South San Francisco-based Harpoon.

Harpoon, whose stock has gained 41% in the past year, closed at $10.55 a share in New York trading on Friday.

Harpoon is developing drugs that harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer, including a type of lung cancer and multiple myeloma. Merck is looking for new sources of growth as its top-selling medicine, also a cancer immunotherapy, is likely to face price pressure at the end of this decade, Bloomberg said.

Harpoon’s technology involves T-cell engagers, drugs that aim to use a patient’s own immune system to kill tumour cells. The company’s lead candidate targets a molecule called delta-like ligand 3 that is expressed at high levels in small cell lung cancer and neuroendocrine tumours.

It’s currently in an early-stage trial as a single agent for patients with certain advanced cancers and is being studied in combination with an existing immunotherapy for small cell lung cancer.