MRK vs PRAX

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.

Praxis Precision Medicines Inc.

Praxis Precision Medicines, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, develops therapies for central nervous system disorders characterized by neuronal imbalance. Its lead product candidates include PRAX-114, an extrasynaptic-preferring GABAA receptor positive allosteric modulator that is in Phase IIa clinical trial for the treatment of major depressive disorder and perimenopausal depression; and PRAX-944, a selective small molecule inhibitor of T-type calcium channels, which is in Phase IIa clinical trial for the treatment of essential tremor. The company is also developing PRAX-562, a persistent sodium current blocker that is in Phase I clinical trial to treat severe pediatric epilepsy and adult cephalgia; PRAX-222, an antisense oligonucleotide for patients with gain-of-function (GOF) SCN2A epilepsy; and KCNT1 program for the treatment of KCNT1 GOF epilepsy. It has a cooperation and license agreement with RogCon Inc.; a license agreement Purdue Neuroscience Company; a research collaboration, option, and license agreement with Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; and collaboration with The Florey Institute to develop three novel ASOs. The company was incorporated in 2015 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.