Merck joined the growing list of pharma adopters of Quotient Therapeutics’ somatic genomics platform by signing a multi-year deal focused on inflammatory bowel disease target discovery. Merck will pay $20 million upfront for platform access and can fund programs through more than $2 billion in development, regulatory, and commercial milestones. Quotient’s approach uses nanorate genome sequencing to identify somatic mutations in patient cells, with AI analysis to suggest druggable targets. The company already has platform collaborations with Pfizer (cardiovascular/renal) and GSK (respiratory/liver disease), and this new Merck agreement extends its play into immunology. The added Merck validation could increase confidence in the platform as a way to link patient-derived mutation biology to therapeutic target selection in complex, heterogeneous diseases like IBD.