MRK vs VERV

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.

Verve Therapeutics Inc.

Verve Therapeutics, Inc., a genetic medicines company, engages in developing gene editing medicines for patients to treat cardiovascular diseases. Its lead product candidate is VERVE-101, a single-course gene editing treatment that permanently turns off the PCSK9 gene in the liver. The company also engages in the development ANGPTL3 program to permanently turn off the ANGPTL3 gene in the liver. It has a collaboration and license agreement with Beam Therapeutics; a development and option agreement with Acuitas Therapeutics, Inc.; and a Cas9 license agreement with The Broad Institute and the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The company was formerly known as Endcadia, Inc. and changed its name to Verve Therapeutics, Inc. in January 2019. Verve Therapeutics, Inc. was incorporated in 2018 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.