Merck signed a collaboration with the Mayo Clinic to combine clinical and genomic datasets, AI tools and advanced analytics to accelerate drug discovery across inflammatory and immune‑mediated diseases. The agreement gives Merck access to Mayo Clinic Platform assets—clinical registries, biorepositories and international datasets—with plans to integrate these resources with Merck’s AI-enabled virtual cell technologies. The initial focus areas include inflammatory bowel disease, atopic dermatitis and multiple sclerosis. Merck said the partnership will validate AI models against real-world clinical data and support translation of insights into therapeutic targets and development strategies. Merck CEO Robert Davis framed the alliance as a convergence of high‑quality clinical data and computational biology, aiming to improve target identification and program success probabilities. The deal underlines Big Pharma’s continued strategy of marrying institutional datasets with proprietary AI stacks to de‑risk preclinical pipelines.