NEW YORK – Personalis said Thursday that Merck has agreed to purchase $50 million worth of its common stock in a private placement at a price of $3.56 per share.
Following the closing, Merck will own approximately 14 million shares, or 16.5 percent of Personalis' stock.
Separately, Personalis said that it has signed a multiyear extension of its partnership with Moderna to utilize Personalis' ImmunoID NeXT Platform to advance V940/mRNA-4157, an investigational individualized neoantigen therapy that is jointly under development by Merck and Moderna.
"A key focus for Personalis has been supporting Merck and Moderna in this important program, and we are thrilled to extend the collaboration potentially through to treatment of cancer patients on a routine basis," Personalis CEO Chris Hall said in a statement.
Merck and Moderna have been using the firm's tumor profiling platform since clinical development of V940/mRNA-4157 started. They announced their partnership initially in February 2023 after the KEYNOTE-942 trial, which used the NeXT platform, met its primary endpoint of improvement in recurrence-free survival for patients treated with the vaccine alongside Merck's Keytruda (pembrolizumab).