Australian biotech Immutep has closed a clinical trial collaboration and supply agreement with global pharma giants Merck and Pfizer.

At the close, Immutep’s shares were up 9.7% to $0.045.

The collaboration will evaluate using a combination of two drugs — Immutep’s lead immunotherapy product candidate, eftilagimod alpha, and avelumab — on patients with advanced cancer.

“We feel that this new collaboration, with these industry leaders, further supports our hypothesis that there is a potentially meaningful therapeutic benefit in combining eftilagimod alpha with a checkpoint inhibitor in the treatment of cancer,” says Marc Voigt, CEO of Immutep.

Salah-Eddin Al-Batran, a member of Immutep’s clinical advisory board, will be the lead investigator of the trial.

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