MRK vs PGEN

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.

Precigen Inc.

Precigen, Inc. discovers and develops the next generation of gene and cellular therapies in the United States. It also provides disease-modifying therapeutics; genetically engineered swine for regenerative medicine applications; proprietary methane bioconversion platform that turns natural gas into energy and chemical products; and reproductive and embryo transfer technologies. In addition, the company offers UltraVector platform that incorporates advanced DNA construction technologies and computational models to design and assemble genetic components into complex gene expression programs; mbIL15, a gene that enhances functional characteristics of immune cells; Sleeping Beauty, a non-viral transposon/transposase system; AttSite recombinases, which breaks and rejoins DNA at specific sequences; AdenoVerse technology platform, a library of engineered adenovector serotypes; and L. lactis is a food-grade bacterium. Additionally, it provides RheoSwitch inducible gene switch that provides quantitative dose-proportionate regulation of the amount and timing of target protein expression; kill switches to selectively eliminate cell therapies in vivo; UltraCAR-T platform for the treatment of cancer; AdenoVerse Immunotherapy, a library of proprietary adenovectors for the gene delivery; and ActoBiotics platform, genetically modified bacteria that deliver proteins and peptides at mucosal sites. Precigen, Inc. has collaboration and license agreements with ZIOPHARM Oncology, Inc.; Ares Trading S.A.; Oragenics, Inc.; Intrexon T1D Partners, LLC; Intrexon Energy Partners, LLC; Intrexon Energy Partners II, LLC; Fibrocell Science, Inc.; OvaXon, LLC; S & I Ophthalmic, LLC; Harvest start-up entities; and Surterra Holdings, Inc. The company was formerly known as Intrexon Corporation and changed its name to Precigen, Inc. in January 2020. Precigen, Inc. was founded in 1998 and is based in Germantown, Maryland.