“We are excited to initiate another collaboration with longstanding immunotherapy leader, Merck, to further explore the potential benefits of combining checkpoint blockade with PORT-6 and PORT-7,” said Dr. Ian Walters, Chief Executive Officer of Portage Biotech. “Our suite of potentially best-in-class adenosine antagonists are designed to act on multiple immune cell types for potentially more robust immunological effect and have been demonstrated preclinically to be more selective, more potent and more durable than other adenosine antagonists in development. We look forward to expanding this collaboration, evaluating our adenosine antagonists and continuing our mission to offer transformational therapies for patients in need.”