Merck & Co (MSD) and Mayo Clinic have entered a research and development collaboration to utilise AI, advanced analytics, and multimodal clinical data in support of drug discovery and precision medicine.
The collaboration will combine Mayo Clinic's Platform architecture and clinical-genomic datasets with MSD’s virtual cell technologies to improve target identification, drive early development decisions, and enhance disease understanding.
It gives MSD direct access to de-identified clinical and multimodal datasets, registries, biorepositories, advanced AI tools, analytics, and the ability to scale solutions through the new Mayo Clinic Platform_Orchestrate programme.
MSD will use Mayo Clinic’s diverse multimodal data, including medical imaging, laboratory results, molecular data, and clinical notes, to validate AI models and inform research insights for discovery and development strategies.
MSD chairman and CEO Robert Davis said: “By working with Mayo Clinic, we aim to integrate high-quality clinical data and AI-enabled insights into discovery research to improve target identification and, ultimately, the probability of success for our programmes.”
Mayo Clinic president and CEO Gianrico Farrugia said: “By combining Mayo Clinic Platform's de-identified data, clinical expertise and Platform technology with Merck's world-class research and development capabilities, we are poised to speed innovative breakthroughs to patients and redefine drug development.
“This collaboration represents a new present and future for healthcare—one where platform-based collaboration leads to more answers, more cures and better outcomes for patients worldwide.”
The partnership’s initial focus will be on therapies in dermatology (atopic dermatitis), neurology (multiple sclerosis), and gastroenterology (inflammatory bowel disease).
Earlier this month, MSD received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Keytruda (pembrolizumab) and Keytruda Qlex (pembrolizumab and berahyaluronidase alfa-pmph), along with paclitaxel, with or without bevacizumab, for ovarian cancer.
