MRK vs PHIO

Merck & Company Inc.

Merck & Co., Inc. operates as a healthcare company worldwide. It operates through two segments, Pharmaceutical and Animal Health segments. The Pharmaceutical segment offers human health pharmaceutical products in the areas of oncology, hospital acute care, immunology, neuroscience, virology, cardiovascular, diabetes, and women's health, as well as vaccine products. The Animal Health segment provides discovers, develops, manufactures, and markets a range of veterinary pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and health management solutions and services, as well as a suite of digitally connected identification, traceability, and monitoring products. The company has collaborations with AstraZeneca PLC; Bayer AG; Eisai Co., Ltd.; and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. It serves drug wholesalers and retailers, hospitals, and government agencies; managed health care providers, such as health maintenance organizations, pharmacy benefit managers, and other institutions; and physicians and physician distributors, veterinarians, and animal producers. The company has collaboration agreement with Gilead Sciences, Inc. to co-develop and co-commercialize long-acting investigational treatment combinations of Lenacapavir and Islatravir in HIV; Amathus Therapeutics to develop treatments for neurodegenerative diseases; and Linnaeus Therapeutics, Inc. to evaluate LNS8801 in combination with KEYTRUDA for patients with advanced cancer. It also has a collaboration with Biomed X Gmbh for building on ongoing research projects in the fields of oncology (DNA damage response and RNA splicing) and autoimmunity (intestinal epithelial barrier in autoimmune diseases); and a collaboration agreement with NGM Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. to focus primarily on the development of novel medicines for unmet patient needs in retinal and CVM diseases, including heart failure. Merck & Co., Inc. was founded in 1891 and is headquartered in Kenilworth, New Jersey.

Phio Pharmaceuticals Corp.

Phio Pharmaceuticals Corp., a biotechnology company, develops immuno-oncology therapeutics in the United States. It offers INTASYL therapeutic platform focuses on silencing tumor-induced suppression of the immune system. The company develops PH-762, which targets the checkpoint protein PD-1 that prevent T cells from attacking various cells for used in adoptive cell transfer (ACT); PH-804 that targets the suppressive immune receptor TIGIT, which is a checkpoint protein present on T cells and natural killer cells for used in ACT; and PH-790 which targets PD-L1 protein that prevent cancer cells from inactivating T cells and attack the cancer. It has collaboration with AgonOx, Inc. on clinical development of novel immunotherapy drugs targeting key regulators of the immune response to cancer. The company was formerly known as RXi Pharmaceuticals Corporation and changed its name to Phio Pharmaceuticals Corp. in November 2018. Phio Pharmaceuticals Corp. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts.