Merrion plans further collaboration

MERRION Pharmaceuticals, the Irish drug development company, is actively looking at pursuing more collaboration relationships with other pharmaceutical companies, in the light of producing a promising set of first-half financial results.

“In the next six months, we’ll expand our early stage pipeline and develop our technology base. We’re currently investigating additional products, which our GIPET technology could bring to the market and we expect to add a new internal project in the coming months,” said Merrion chief executive, John Lynch.

“Our focus on building and maintaining new strategic partners is an ongoing process and we’re continuing to pursue new exciting potential complementary collaborations with other pharmaceutical companies. To accelerate this process we’ve considerably strengthened our business development function,” he added.

Merrion’s first-half results, published yesterday, showed a 63% year-on-year increase in total revenue, from €1.7 million to €2.75m. The company also managed to cut its first-half net losses by 65% to just €810,000 (compared to €2.34m at the corresponding stage last year); while its loss per ordinary share fell from 14c to 5c.

The first half of this year has also seen Merrion investing in its 30,000sq ft state-of-the-art production facility in Citywest in Dublin, which recently received a full manufacturing licence from the Irish Medical Board.