Merck & Co. is partnering with newly emerged N-Power Medicine on cancer clinical trials, according to a July 1 announcement.
The pharma giant’s global health innovation arm also led N-Power’s new series B financing round, which closed May 21 but was announced the same day as the Merck collaboration. While the companies didn’t share financial details on the round, N-Power said the round brought the company's total raised to $72 million.
“N-Power’s unique approach offers the important opportunity to expand clinical research to more oncologists and their patients through standardized data collection, actionable insights, and the time and resources to participate in a model of accelerated drug development,” David Rubin, Ph.D., managing director of the Merck fund, said in a press release.
N-Power offers community oncology clinics a platform of technologies that can help them participate in clinical trials. Tools include its Kaleido Registry product, which is used to collect standardized patient data for trial recruitment and enrollment, and point-of-care technologies for workflow management. The company also offers experts, both on-site and virtual, to implement the registry and support clinic staff.
Merck will use N-Power’s network of platform-enabled oncology clinics for trials on non-small cell lung cancer. The new collaboration is the second CRO partnership the Big Pharma has announced this year. In January, it signed an R&D agreement with Culmination Bio that is initially focused on autoimmune disease research.