ASCO 2023 – Trop2 Could Validate Merck’s Savvy Deal With Kelun

While Gilead Sciences, Inc., AstraZeneca PLC and Pfizer Inc. have spent billions acquiring expertise in antibody-drug conjugates, Merck & Co., Inc. has trodden a different path. Two low-key deals with China’s Kelun brought an early-stage portfolio of ADCs, and the most important of these just yielded its first human data.

That asset is MK-2870, an ADC targeting Trop2 whose Kelun-sponsored lung cancer trial was the subject of poster at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting 4 June