RGEN to pursue therapeutic HIV vaccine

RGEN to pursue therapeutic HIV vaccine Repligen Corp. was to announce today that its agreement with Merck & Co. Inc. has been modified to allow RGEN to independently pursue research and clinical testing of its RP400c immunogen for use as a therapeutic HIV vaccine. Under the agreement, RGEN is licensing technology from Merck that was developed as part of the prophylactic program. Merck has the option, after the completion of Phase I and Phase II trials, to compensate RGEN for its development costs and participate as a co-developer and co-promoter of a product.

The change doesn't alter the ongoing collaboration on a prophylactic vaccine.That agreement has been extended for a further year to May 1994. RGEN President and CEO Sanford Smith said that Merck isn't interested in therapeutic HIV vaccines, focusing instead on internal programs to develop orally active synthetic molecules as protease inhibitors and reverse transcriptase inhibitors...