Merck has agreed to buy Seattle-based biotechnology company, Immune Design, with the goal of improving vaccine development.
Immune Design is a late-stage immunotherapy company employing next-generation in vivo approaches to enable the body's immune system to fight disease. The company's proprietary technologies, GLAAS and ZVex, are engineered to activate the immune system's natural ability to generate and/or expand antigen-specific cytotoxic immune cells to fight cancer and other chronic diseases, says the company.
Merck hopes that the $300 million cash deal will boost the drugmaker's capabilities in vaccine development for infectious diseases and cancer. The deal is expected to close early in the second quarter of this year.
Read the press release