MRK vs ZIOP

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.

ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc

ZIOPHARM Oncology, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, focuses on discovering, acquiring, developing, and commercializing a portfolio of immuno-oncology therapies to treat patients with cancer. The company develops Sleeping Beauty platform, which is based on the non-viral genetic engineering of immune cells using a transposon/transposase system to engineer T-cells outside of the body for infusion; and Controlled IL-12 to stimulate expression of interleukin 12 or IL-12, a master regular of the immune system, in a controlled manner to focus the patient's immune system to attack cancer cells. Its product candidates include T cell receptor + T therapies to target solid tumors; chimeric antigen receptor + T cell therapies targeting CD19 for hematologic malignancies; and Ad-RTS-hIL-12 plus veledimex, a gene delivery system to regulate production of IL-12 to treat patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme in adults. The company has a license agreement with PGEN Therapeutics, Inc.; research and development agreement with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center; a patent license agreement with the National Cancer Institute; and a cooperative research and development agreement with the National Cancer Institute. ZIOPHARM Oncology, Inc. is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.