MRK vs SPRO

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.

Spero Therapeutics Inc.

Spero Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, focuses on identifying, developing, and commercializing novel treatments for multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacterial infections and rare diseases in the United States. Its product candidates include tebipenem pivoxil hydrobromide (HBr), an oral carbapenem-class antibiotic to treat MDR gram-negative infections for adults; SPR206, a direct acting IV-administered agent to treat MDR Gram-negative bacterial infections in the hospital; and SPR720, an oral antibiotic for the treatment of non-tuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary disease. Spero Therapeutics, Inc. has license agreement with Meiji Seika Pharma Co., Ltd. to support the development of tebipenem HBr; license agreement with Everest Medicines to develop, manufacture, and commercialize SPR206 in Greater China, South Korea, and Southeast Asian countries; collaboration agreement with Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute to develop SPR720 for the treatment of lung infections caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis; and license agreement with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated for patents relating to SPR720, as well as SPR719, an active metabolite. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.