Merck and Mayo Clinic Launch AI-Driven Drug Discovery Partnership

Merck and Mayo Clinic announced a research and development agreement to apply artificial intelligence, advanced analytics and multimodal clinical data to support drug discovery and development. The agreement integrates Mayo Clinic's Platform architecture as well as clinical and genomic datasets with Merck's ambition to harness AI-enabled virtual cell technologies to enhance disease understanding, improve target identification and drive early development decisions.

This partnership marks Mayo Clinic's first strategic collaboration of this scale with a global biopharmaceutical company. The alliance aims to integrate Mayo Clinic's comprehensive clinical and genomic datasets with Merck's use of AI-driven technologies to deepen disease insights, refine target identification, and enhance early-stage development strategies.

By leveraging Mayo Clinic Platform, which brings together data from Mayo Clinic U.S. and its international partner network in a secure environment, Merck will integrate Mayo Clinic's clinical insights and genomic data sets, including AI and machine learning-enabled discovery spanning computational and spatial biology. The new Mayo Clinic Platform_Orchestrate program provides Merck direct access to Mayo Clinic's world-class clinical and scientific expertise; platform data including de-identified clinical and multimodal data sets, registries and biorepositories; advanced AI tools and analytics; and the ability to scale solutions.

Merck intends to utilize an array of Mayo Clinic's multimodal data, including lab reports, medical imaging, clinical summaries, and molecular information, all critical for validating AI models and transforming research findings into actionable development strategies.

Merck is a healthcare company that delivers health solutions through its prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, and animal health products. The company makes pharmaceutical products to treat several conditions in a number of therapeutic areas, including cardiometabolic disease, cancer, and infections. Within cancer, the firm's immuno-oncology platform, led by Keytruda, is a major contributor to overall sales. The company also has a substantial vaccine business aimed at preventing pediatric diseases, as well as Gardasil for human papillomavirus. From a geographical perspective, 47% of the company's sales are generated from US human health.

The company has a market capitalization of approximately $301.74 billion to $301.96 billion. Merck's revenue is $65.01 billion, with a 3-year growth rate of 9.6%. The company's operating margin is 34.01% and net margin is 28.08%. The firm had revenue of $16.40 billion for the quarter, compared to expectations of $16.19 billion. The company reported earnings per share of $2.09 for the quarter, with a return on equity of 38.03%.