Merck & Co in the Arena

Merck & Co. has taken an equity investment in San Diego-based Arena Pharmaceuticals, purchasing $7.5m of Arena common stock at $8.00 per share. This represents a 70% premium to Arena's closing share price on 19 October.

Arena also announced that Merck extended and expanded on the companies' existing cardiovascular collaboration. Under the amended agreement, Merck will pay Arena $5.7m a year for research and development related to their cardiovascular collaboration until October 2007. Merck and Arena also expanded the scope of the agreement to include a wider range of potential therapies for cardiovascular disease.

In 2002, Merck and Arena entered into a collaboration focused on a group of GPCR targets which were discovered by Arena and which may represent novel targets for cardiovascular disease.

'Merck's equity investment and continued commitment to our cardiovascular collaboration is a credit to our scientists and validates our GPCR technologies,' stated Jack Lief, Arena's president and chief executive officer. 'Over the next few years, we look forward to working synergistically with Merck to bring effective treatments for cardiovascular disease to the clinic.'

'Merck is pleased with the progress the collaboration has achieved to date,' says Dr Mervyn Turner, senior vice president worldwide licensing and external research. 'We look forward to continuing our work with Arena in this important area.'