Merck’s COVID-19 Therapeutic Development Path Gets A Little Harder

Pharma Shelves One Drug Program, Narrows Another

After backing off of MRK-7110 for hospitalized patients the company’s focus is on the oral antiviral molnupiravir for outpatients – which would be a huge win, but the drug has yet to fully prove itself in the clinic.

COVID-19 SARS,Coronaviridae , SARS-CoV, SARSCoV, virus 2020 , MERS-CoV ,chinese virus 2019-nCoV
Merck & Co. shelved its MRK-7110 COVID-19 program and is focusing on outpatients for molnupiravir • Source: Shutterstock

Merck & Co., Inc.’s decision to pivot away from COVID-19 vaccine development and toward treatments looks like less of a sure thing as the company is now discontinuing development of MRK-7110, one of two therapies acquired in late 2020, and will focus development of the other candidate, molnupiravir, in outpatients due to lack of benefit in the hospitalized population.

More broadly across the industry, it appears that the wide variety of potential vaccines and therapies that emerged in 2020 has begun to narrow down – as vaccination spreads

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