Merck has entered into a collaboration with Quotient worth up to $2.2 billion to develop new treatments for inflammatory bowel disease using somatic genomics technology. The partnership aims to identify novel therapeutic targets by analyzing genetic mutations found directly in patient tissue affected by IBD.
Quotient's somatic genomics platform interrogates patient tissue within the disease context to find somatic genetic mutations that either cause or protect from IBD. The company has built what it describes as the first and largest somatic genomic database, containing 3.6 million novel coding mutations that could inform drug discovery efforts.