MRK vs MRNA

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.

Moderna Inc.

Moderna, Inc., a biotechnology company, develops therapeutics and vaccines based on messenger RNA for the treatment of infectious diseases, immuno-oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and auto-immune diseases. As of March 9, 2021, the company had 13 programs in clinical trials and a total of 24 development programs in six modalities comprising prophylactic vaccines, cancer vaccines, intratumoral immuno-oncology, localized regenerative therapeutics, systemic secreted and cell surface therapeutics, and systemic intracellular therapeutics. The company has strategic alliances with AstraZeneca PLC, Merck & Co., Inc., Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Europe) Limited, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institutes of Health, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Moderna, Inc. also has collaborations with Lonza Ltd. for the manufacture of COVID-19 vaccine; and Catalent Inc., Laboratorios Farmacéuticos Rovi, S.A., Recipharm, and Lonza Group for fill-finish manufacturing of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, as well as Aldevron, LLC for supporting COVID-19 vaccine and additional programs in company's clinical development pipeline. The company was formerly known as Moderna Therapeutics, Inc. and changed its name to Moderna, Inc. in August 2018. Moderna, Inc. was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.