ACER vs MRK

Acer Therapeutics Inc.

Acer Therapeutics Inc., a pharmaceutical company, focuses on the acquisition, development, and commercialization of therapies for serious rare and life-threatening diseases. Its pipeline includes four clinical-stage candidates: EDSIVO for the treatment of vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome in patients with a confirmed type III collagen mutation; ACER-001, a formulation of sodium phenylbutyrate for the treatment of various inborn errors of metabolism, including urea cycle disorders and maple syrup urine disease; ACER-801 (osanetant) for the treatment of induced Vasomotor Symptoms; and ACER-2820 (emetine), a host-directed therapy against a variety of infectious diseases, including COVID-19. The company has a research collaboration agreement with the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) to develop emetine hydrochloride as a potential treatment for patients with COVID-19; and a license agreement with Sanofi to acquire worldwide rights to osanetant, a clinical-stage, selective, and non-peptide tachykinin NK3 receptor antagonist. Acer Therapeutics Inc. was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts.

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.