Ra Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced that it has earned a clinical development milestone under its collaboration agreement with Merck, known as MSD outside the U.S. and Canada. The milestone is associated with the dosing of the first patient in a Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating an investigational orally-available macrocyclic peptide for a non-complement cardiovascular target with a large market opportunity from the companies' collaboration. Initiated in 2013, the Merck collaboration leverages Ra Pharma's Extreme Diversity platform aimed at producing macrocyclic peptides that are designed to have the diversity and specificity of antibodies, while retaining the pharmacologic attributes of small molecules, with the potential to allow for the rapid identification, design, and development of drug-like peptides with high stability, bioavailability, cell permeability, and potency.

Under the terms of the agreement, Ra Pharma is eligible to earn up to $56 million in additional milestone payments from Merck based upon the achievement of development, regulatory, and commercialization milestones. Ra Pharma is also eligible to receive low-to-mid single digit percentage royalties on any future sales of compounds resulting from the collaboration.