Moderna Therapeutics announced that Merck has licensed a vaccine program against an undisclosed viral target, including mRNA 1566 and a set of related novel vaccine candidates, as part of the ongoing collaboration between the companies to discover and develop vaccines and passive immunity treatments against viral diseases using modified messenger RNA (mRNA). The inclusion of this new program, which was not part of the original collaboration agreement, follows the rapid progress made in the first year of the collaboration. Under the terms of the amendment, Moderna has licensed a vaccine program against an undisclosed viral target, including mRNA 1566 and a set of related novel vaccine candidates to Merck.

mRNA 1566 has shown promising results in early development efforts undertaken by the Valera team. Moderna will receive an upfront payment for this program and will be eligible to receive development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments related to the new target, as well as tiered royalties on net sales of resulting products. Consistent with the existing collaboration, Merck will lead the development of the candidate and commercialization of any products resulting from the agreement, while Moderna will design and synthesize the mRNA vaccine candidates directed against selected targets.

As part of the initial three-year research agreement announced in January 2015, Merck made an upfront cash payment of $50 million and a $50 million equity investment to utilize granted licenses to commercialize five product candidates.