MRK vs VERU

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.

Veru Inc.

Veru Inc., an oncology biopharmaceutical company, focuses on developing medicines for the management of cancers. Its commercial products comprise FC2 female condom/internal condom for the dual protection against unintended pregnancy and the transmission of sexually transmitted infections for ministries of health, government health agencies, U.N. agencies, nonprofit organizations, and commercial partners. The company's development drug candidates include VERU-111, an oral chemical entity that is being evaluated in open label Phase 1b and Phase 2 clinical trials in men with metastatic castration and androgen receptor targeting agent resistant prostate cancer, as well as being evaluated in a Phase 2 clinical trial for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 in subjects at high risk for acute respiratory distress syndrome; and for the treatment of taxane resistant metastatic triple negative breast cancer. Its drug candidates also comprise VERU-100, a gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist peptide formulation to address the current limitations of commercially available androgen deprivation therapies (ADT) for advanced prostate cancer; and Zuclomiphene Citrate, an oral nonsteroidal estrogen receptor agonist to treat hot flashes, a common side effect caused by ADT in men with advanced prostate cancer. In addition, the company's drug candidates include Enobosarm, an oral selective androgen receptor agonist that targets the androgen receptor positive, estrogen receptor positive, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 metastatic breast cancer without the unwanted virilizing side effects. Further, it is advancing a new drug formulation in its specialty pharmaceutical pipeline addressing unmet medical needs in urology, such as Tadalafil and Finasteride Combination. The company was formerly known as The Female Health Company and changed its name to Veru Inc. in July 2017. Veru Inc. is headquartered in Miami, Florida.