Merck joins Toronto consortium with $7.5 M contribution

Toronto, ON – Pharmaceutical company Merck has joined the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) Toronto with a contribution of $7.5 million.

The supported projects focus on pre-competitive research to develop small inhibitory molecules called chemical probes to study epigenetic mechanisms of regulation. In collaboration with leading clinical institutions in Ontario and around the world, use of the probes will expand the understanding of biology in multiple disease areas, particularly cancer and inflammatory diseases.

“At Merck, we strive to identify and support research areas that will have the most impact on fulfilling the unmet medical needs of patients, who are at the core of everything we do,” said Chirfi Guindo, president and managing director, Merck Canada Inc. “In Canada, Merck is very pleased to be able to encourage innovation and research across an established SGC collaborative network of more than 250 academic laboratories at leading institutions.”

Funded by Abbvie, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Eli Lilly Canada, Genome Canada, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Merck Canada, Novartis, Ontario Ministry of Research & Innovation, Pfizer, Takeda, and the Wellcome Trust, the SGC has a large network of collaborators based at leading academic institutions worldwide. It is creating an ‘open-source’ public-private partnership that generates knowledge, technologies, and research tools to discover and characterize pioneer drug discovery targets. The overarching aim of the partnership is to enable private sector funders to advance a significant number of pioneer targets into proprietary drug discovery programs.