MRK vs PRQR

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.

ProQR Therapeutics N.V.

ProQR Therapeutics N.V., a biopharmaceutical company, engages in the discovery and development of RNA-based therapeutics for the treatment of genetic disorders. It is primarily developing sepofarsen that is in phase II/III illuminate trial for treating leber's congenital amaurosis 10 disease; QR-421a, which is in phase I/II stellar trial for usher syndrome type 2 and non-syndromic retinitis pigmentosa; QR-1123 that is in phase I/II aurora trial for the treatment of autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa; and QR-504a, which is in first clinical trial for the treatment of fuchs endothelial corneal dystrophy. It has a license agreement with Radboud University Medical Center, Inserm Transfert SA, Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Leiden University Medical Center. ProQR Therapeutics N.V. was incorporated in 2012 and is headquartered in Leiden, the Netherlands.