Merrimack Pharmaceuticals is a pharmaceutical company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. They specialize in developing drugs for the treatment of cancer.

Merrimack's first FDA-approved drug was approved in 2015; Onivyde, a liposome encapsulated version of irinotecan is used for treating pancreatic adenocarcinoma. It was approved for use in the European Union the following year. ^{[1] [2]}

History

Merrimack was founded by a group of scientists from MIT and Harvard University in 2000. ^[3]

In 2016, Merrimack had 426 full-time employees, 103 of which had an MD or PhD. ^[3]

In October 2016, CEO Robert Mulroy resigned and the company announced they would be laying off 20% of its employees. ^[4] In January 2017, interim CEO Gary Crocker resigned and the board of directors appointed Richard Peters to be president and CEO. Peters previously worked at Sanofi and was a faculty member at Harvard University. ^[5]

In January 2017, French pharmaceutical company Ipsen announced they would be purchasing Onivyde from Merrimack for approximately $1 billion. ^[6]

On November 13, 2018, the statistical programming director Songjiang Wang, received "six months in prison and one year supervised released" after a guilty verdict was handed down to Wang from a United States District Judge in July 2018 for securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. ^[7] Also on December 20, 2019, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission charged Wang with Insider trading. ^[8]

Pipeline

Merrimack has four drugs in clinical development.

• MM-302 – HER2 targeting antibody-drug conjugate
• MM-121 ( seribantumab) – anti- HER3 monoclonal antibody
• MM-141 ( istiratumab) – IGF-1R and HER3 bispecific monoclonal antibody
• MM-151 – anti- EGFR mixture of monoclonal antibody

References