MRK vs OTIC

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.

Otonomy Inc.

Otonomy, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, develops therapeutics for neurotology in the United States. The company offers OTIPRIO, a ciprofloxacin otic suspension for use during tympanostomy tube placement surgery in pediatric patients. It also develops OTIVIDEX, a sustained-exposure formulation of the steroid dexamethasone that has completed Phase III clinical trial for the treatment of Ménière's disease; OTO-313, a sustained-exposure formulation of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist gacyclidine, which has completed Phase I/II clinical trial to treat tinnitus; and OTO-413, a sustained-exposure formulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor that is in Phase I/II clinical trial for the repair of cochlear synaptopathy and the treatment of speech-in-noise hearing difficulties. In addition, the company develops OTO-510, an otoprotectant for the prevention of cisplatin-induced hearing loss; OTO-825, a gene therapy for the treatment of congenital hearing loss; and OTO-6XX induces hair cell repair and regeneration for the treatment of severe hearing loss. The company has license agreements with University of California and DURECT Corporation; and strategic collaboration with Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation to develop and commercialize gene therapy for congenital hearing loss. Otonomy, Inc. was incorporated in 2008 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.