Merck Research Laboratories entered a multi‑year collaboration with Quotient Therapeutics, paying $20 million up front for access to Quotient's somatic genomics platform to discover drug targets in inflammatory bowel disease. Quotient—built on nanoscale sequencing and AI to identify somatic mutations in disease tissues—is eligible for up to roughly $2.2 billion in downstream milestones. Quotient has struck similar partnerships with Pfizer and GSK and claims its platform can reveal tissue‑specific, druggable targets across autoimmune, oncology and metabolic indications. Merck framed the deal as a way to uncover unique biology in IBD that conventional germline genomics can miss.