Innovation

Our Q2 2025 financial results

July 29, 2025

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MSD’s Q2 2025 sales performance reflects strength across oncology and animal health, as well as increasing contributions from new launches. Our company announced Q2 worldwide sales of $15.8 billion.​

“Earlier this month, we were pleased to announce our pending acquisition of Verona Pharma, which augments our portfolio and pipeline and is another example of acting decisively when science and value align,” said Rob Davis, chairman and CEO. “Today, we announced a multiyear optimization initiative that will redirect investment and resources from more mature areas of our business to our burgeoning array of new growth drivers, further enable the transformation of our portfolio, and drive our next chapter of productive, innovation-driven growth. With these actions, I am confident that we are well positioned to generate near- and long-term value for our shareholders and, most importantly, deliver for our patients.”​

​MSD anticipates full-year 2025 worldwide sales to be between $64.3 billion and $65.3 billion.​

Take a look at the infographic below for more details on Q2 2025 results.

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Innovation

Exploring KRAS: A precision approach in oncology

MSD scientists research oncogene mutations driving cancer growth

July 22, 2025

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3D depiction of KRAS protein complex
3D depiction of KRAS protein complex

How oncogenes like KRAS drive cancer growth

Armed with an ever-deepening understanding of cancer biology and advanced precision medicine tools, scientists have traced the molecular basis of cancer cell formation and tumor growth to alterations in key genes, known as oncogenes. Oncogenes play a crucial role in driving cancer growth by disrupting normal cellular processes that control cell growth and division.

When oncogenes are mutated, they cause cells to grow and divide uncontrollably, leading to tumor formation and cancer development. Understanding how oncogenes drive cancer development provides a potential means to explore new research approaches aimed at the specific genetic drivers of a patient’s cancer compared with a one-size-fits-all approach.

KRAS is one of the most frequently mutated oncogenes found in cancer. In healthy cells, KRAS serves as an on-off switch that regulates cell growth. However, when the gene is mutated, KRAS can become stuck in the “on” position, causing uncontrolled cancer cell growth and proliferation. Several different mutations of KRAS have been identified, and commonly found types include G12C, G12V and G12D.

The KRAS G12C mutation occurs in approximately 14% of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and 3-5% of colorectal cancers.

Jane Anne Healy headshot

“We now know there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to treating cancer. By focusing on key oncogenes like KRAS, we’re exploring how to harness precision approaches to potentially impact tumor growth at its source.”

  • Dr. Jane Healy
    Vice president and head of oncology early development, MSD Research Laboratories

Advances in targeting KRAS

Despite decades of research, the smooth, spherical structure of the KRAS protein hindered efforts to impact its activity on a molecular level. That’s because chemists often look for places to engage with the protein on its surface, like crevices or cracks.

After 40 years of research and informed by a greater understanding of the detailed structure of the KRAS protein, scientists have discovered ways to engage with a pocket that appears on KRAS when the protein is maintained in an inactive state.

“As we advance our KRAS research efforts, we’re hopeful that we may uncover new ways to impact the underlying processes that fuel cancer growth.”

  • Dr. Marjorie Green
    Senior vice president and head of oncology, global clinical development, MSD Research Laboratories

Today, our scientists are building on these findings to advance potential targeted approaches in oncology research. Our precision oncology research efforts are a key tenet in our robust oncology pipeline.

Innovation

We’re pursuing innovative science with antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) research

MSD scientists are evaluating ADCs to explore novel treatment approaches in both solid tumors and blood cancers

May 27, 2025

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3D depiction of an antibody-drug conjugate molecule

What are antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs)?

ADCs are a targeted means to transport and deliver chemotherapy to tumor cells. More than two decades since the first approval of an ADC, scientists continue to explore how, by leveraging novel scientific advancements, they can find new ways to better design and develop these molecules in order to better address current unmet needs in cancer treatment.

ADCs are made up of three distinct yet equally important elements — an antibody, a linker and a cytotoxic drug/chemotherapy payload. These elements work together to transport the chemotherapy payload to a specific target expressed on the surface of a cancer cell, bind to the target and then be absorbed into the cell to release the chemotherapy.

Anatomy of an ADC

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  • The antibody serves as the targeting mechanism, like a zip code helping to direct the delivery of the chemotherapy agent to cancerous cells.
  • The payload, or the chemotherapy agent, is responsible for working to destroy the cancer cell when it’s released.
  • The linker attaches the chemotherapy agent to the antibody and triggers the release of the chemotherapy agent once inside a cancerous cell.

Watch an animation of an ADC in action

Advancements in the scientific research behind ADCs

Since ADCs were first introduced in 2000, the chemistry and science behind these molecules has advanced significantly, and scientists have developed a greater understanding of what makes a good ADC target and how to design ADCs more effectively.

Tumor antigens, or proteins expressed on the outside of a cancer cell, are what an antibody initially binds to. Scientists now know that characteristics like how quickly an antigen is brought inside the cell and whether an antigen is recycled back to the cell surface are crucially important.

“Imagine ADCs as specialized agents that recognize and bind to specific tumor antigens on cancer cells. Once they attach to these antigens, ADCs are internalized by the cell, allowing the chemotherapy agent to be released directly inside, delivering the treatment where it’s needed most — at the core of the cancer cell.”

  • Dr. Omobolaji Akala
    Associate vice president of oncology early development, MSD Research Laboratories

There have also been notable advancements in both linker and payload chemistry. Scientists have been focused on improving the stability of linkers and reducing the risk of payload release in the body, as well as evaluating where and how many molecules can be incorporated into the payload. Combined, these advancements may help in reducing damage to nearby healthy cells, while releasing a potent payload precisely within a cancer cell.

This evolving understanding of the science is fueling innovative research efforts with the goal of bringing more effective ADCs to patients.

“We’ve learned that designing ADCs is about balancing the right level of tumor antigen expression, the right potency of a cytotoxic agent in the payload, addressing the cell biology through that payload and engineering a payload to release at the right time and in the right place.”

  • Dr. Marjorie Green
    Senior vice president and head of oncology, global clinical development, MSD Research Laboratories

Exploring ADC targets

We’re focusing on proteins associated with poor prognosis across both solid tumors and blood cancers to expand the impact of ADC therapies and address the needs of more patients. Our scientists are also combining ADCs with other innovative treatments such as immunotherapies and T-cell engagers.

By exploring the potential of a broad range of ADC targets and applying new technologies — such as novel linker chemistries, optimized payloads and combination strategies with other therapies — we aim to deepen our understanding of these complex molecules and work to identify and develop new meaningful therapeutic options for patients, aligning with our purpose of using the power of cutting-edge science to save and improve lives around the world.

Learn more about our work in oncology.

Innovation

Our Q1 2025 financial results

April 24, 2025

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MSD’s Q1 2025 results reflect strong progress, including increasing contributions from newer medicines and vaccines. Our company announced Q1 worldwide sales of $15.5 billion.​

​”Our company made strong progress to start the year, with increasing contributions from our newer commercialized medicines and vaccines and continued advancement of our pipeline,” said Rob Davis, chairman and chief executive officer. “We are working with focus and urgency to both realize the full potential of our near-term opportunities and to rapidly progress the next wave of innovation that will positively impact the lives of patients and drive future value creation for all of our stakeholders.”​

​MSD anticipates full-year 2025 worldwide sales to be between $64.1 billion and $65.6 billion.​

​Take a look at the infographic below for more details on Q1 2025 results.

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Innovation

Our researchers incorporate LLMs to accelerate drug discovery and development

What are artificial intelligence (AI) agents? They're intelligent systems combining large language models (LLM), AI models and tools to iteratively plan, execute and optimize tasks

February 4, 2025

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Did you know that LLMs can be leveraged as master multitaskers? These LLM-based multitaskers, often called AI agents, can execute different tasks simultaneously. Having a team of high-performing AI assistants that can each play different roles ultimately helps researchers at MSD Research Labs (MRL) focus on critical drug discovery and development.

In today’s data-driven world, AI agents are emerging as a powerful tool for researchers and scientists to aid them in navigating the complexities of large data sets, refining hypotheses and executing both repetitive and differentiated tasks efficiently. Done manually, that kind of data gathering and analysis costs time and money.

MSD researchers use AI to augment human ability

A long-standing ambition for AI is to help find major scientific discoveries, learn on its own and acquire knowledge autonomously. This is what some call an “AI scientist.” While this concept is aspirational, advances in agent-based AI can help pave the way for the development of AI agents as conversable systems capable of reflective learning and reasoning that coordinate LLMs, machine learning (ML) tools, or even combinations of them.

Rather than taking humans out of the discovery process, AI can augment human ability to break down a problem into manageable subtasks, which can then be addressed by AI agents with specialized functions for targeted problem solving and integration of scientific knowledge. One significant advantage of these collaborative systems is their capacity for automation. Repetitive tasks, such as data cleaning or preliminary analysis, can be handled by AI agents, freeing our scientists to focus on higher level work and strategic decision making.

“We’ve already deployed AI agents, including in development workflows like medical writing, where agents query and assemble knowledge, and evaluate both human and AI writing.”

  • Matt Studney
    Senior vice president, information technology, MRL

“We see broad applicability of AI agents, for example in orchestrating discovery workflows, where agents can help researchers in generating molecular design ideas and insights, optimize assay workflows and generate biology insights integrated across cells, organisms and human genomics,” he said. “We see agents making the R&D process faster and crucially driving higher quality results. Agents help capitalize on MSD’s long-standing investments in AI/ML by rapidly accelerating the speed of our human researchers at scale.”

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Innovation

Our Q4 and full-year 2024 financial results

February 4, 2025

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MSD’s Q4 and full-year 2024 results reflect strong growth. Our company announced Q4 worldwide sales of $15.6 billion, an increase of 7% from Q4 2023. Full-year 2024 worldwide sales were $64.2 billion, an increase of 7% from full-year 2023. ​

​“We delivered strong growth in 2024, reflecting demand for our innovative portfolio, including for KEYTRUDA, the successful launch of WINREVAIR and strong performance of our Animal Health business,” said Rob Davis, chairman and chief executive officer. “We’re continuing to progress our pipeline, advance key clinical programs and augment our pipeline through promising business development. Our business remains well positioned thanks to the dedication of our talented global team, and I am more confident than ever in our long-term growth potential.”​

​MSD anticipates full-year 2025 worldwide sales to be between $64.1 billion and $65.6 billion.​

​Take a look at the infographic below for more details on Q4 and full-year 2024 results.

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Innovation

Podcast: How AI can improve insight into disease biology

A scientist explains how we’re using AI capabilities to help identify patterns in tissue and tumor samples indiscernible to the human eye

December 20, 2024

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We see the potential of data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help investigate new areas, pathways and mechanisms that may forge new opportunities to strengthen our pipeline through enhanced insights.

In a recent episode of the Health Pulse podcast by SAS, Dr. Greg Goldmacher, associate vice president, clinical research, and head of clinical imaging and pathology at MSD, discussed how we’re using these AI capabilities, like computer vision, to improve disease biology insights and help with objective imaging analysis to identify patterns indiscernible to the human eye.

“If you have AI tools that are trained to pick up subtle early signs of disease on scans that are being done for other reasons, there’s a real opportunity there for earlier diagnosis,” said Goldmacher in the podcast episode. “If you’re going to do opportunistic screening, for example, and want to train AI for that, what you need is longitudinal data sets where you can find patients who had the disease, and then go and look for scans that they might have had in the past to use to train the disease-recognizing models.”

Listen to the podcast

Read the transcript

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Innovation

Building on our understanding of gynecologic cancers

How we’re driving research forward for women with common types of gynecologic cancer

December 16, 2024

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By the numbers, the impact of gynecologic cancers feels overwhelming. The term “gynecologic cancers” primarily refers to cancers of three organs: the uterus, ovaries and cervix. As of 2022, these gynecologic cancers are some of the most commonly occurring cancer types for women worldwide. Even with advances in prevention and treatment, nearly 700,000 are projected to die from these diseases every year.

“To truly understand where we can begin to make progress, we need to look beyond the numbers,” said Dr. Gursel Aktan, vice president, global clinical development.

Understanding the trend

While “gynecologic cancers” primarily refers to the three cancer types mentioned above, it may also include cancers of the fallopian tube, vagina, and vulva.

“While the gynecologic cancer rates vary from country to country, the overall incidence rates of endometrial and cervical cancers have increased over time.”

  • Dr. Gursel Aktan

Endometrial cancer, which affects the lining of the uterus, is the most common gynecologic cancer in developed countries. Incidence rates for cervical and endometrial cancers, which mainly affect post-menopausal women, have been rising globally over the last two decades. The highest rates of diagnosis and death from gynecologic cancers were found in Eastern and Southern Africa and Melanesia.

“Unfortunately, many women may not recognize their symptoms as abnormal until their tumors are larger or may have spread,” said Dr. Aktan.

Building on what we have learned

“As our understanding of cancer continues to improve, there have been meaningful advances in cancer therapy, but we still have work to do to achieve our goal of helping more patients,” said Dr. Aktan.

To build on that momentum, we’re driving forward research focused on novel approaches for patients with certain gynecologic cancers with ~12 clinical trials for ~8,000 patients around the world. This work is grounded in our company’s three key focus areas in oncology research:

  • Evaluating combinations that play different roles in adjusting the immune response.
  • Precision molecular targeting to impact pathways that drive cancer growth.
  • Investigating ways to increase cancer cell sensitivity to immune responses.

“We’re also still learning about the right sequence in which to use treatments, and the truth is, the answers may be different tumor by tumor, patient by patient,” said Dr. Aktan.

“The better we understand how we can use these approaches to further cancer care, the closer we move toward our ultimate goal of supporting patients touched by cancer.”

  • Dr. Gursel Aktan

Learn more about our work in oncology.

Innovation

Our Q3 2024 financial results

October 31, 2024

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MSD’s Q3 2024 financial results represent strong progress across the business and our diverse pipeline. Our company announced worldwide sales of $16.7 billion, an increase of 4% from Q3 2023.​

​“Our third-quarter results were strong, as we continue to make progress heading into 2025 and beyond,” said Rob Davis, chairman and chief executive officer. “Our pipeline is advancing and expanding, demonstrating our success in creating a sustainable innovation engine, and positioning MSD with a more diversified portfolio to drive growth. I continue to remain confident in the strength of our business and our ability to execute, and I want to thank our colleagues across the globe for their focus and commitment as we work to create lasting value for patients, shareholders and all our stakeholders.”​

​MSD anticipates full-year 2024 worldwide sales to be between $63.6 billion and $64.1 billion. ​​

​Find more details on Q3 2024 results below.​

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Innovation

TL1A: Exploring a potentially important target for inflammatory bowel disease

Our scientists are investigating ways to modulate TL1A to potentially address inflammation and fibrosis associated with inflammatory bowel disease

October 9, 2024

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Picture the immune system as a carefully orchestrated network of organs, cells and molecules working together to protect your body from foreign invaders. Normally, this system operates smoothly, identifying and then fighting off microbes. However, in the case of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a person’s immune system can mistakenly attack their own tissues, causing chronic inflammation and tissue damage.

Approximately 10 million people live with IBD worldwide, the two most common forms being Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Patients with IBD experience symptoms such as diarrhea, blood in the stool, abdominal pain, unintended weight loss, fatigue and impaired sleep. In 25-40% of patients, IBD may affect organs and tissues outside of the gastrointestinal system, including the joints, skin, bones, eyes, kidneys and liver. When IBD is uncontrolled, it can lead to hospitalizations and surgery.

Despite available therapies which have helped improve patients’ symptoms over the last two decades, many patients do not achieve a state of sustained remission.  

“People with IBD often struggle to find a treatment that works for them because each individual’s disease is different,” said Aileen Pangan, vice president and therapeutic area head, immunology clinical research, MSD Research Laboratories.

“With a better understanding of the biology of IBD, medicines have begun to emerge that aim to change the way we approach treatment. We’re investigating ways to modulate targets, including TL1A, that have been implicated in IBD and other immune-mediated inflammatory diseases.”

  • Aileen Pangan

Our TL1A research

Our scientists are investigating tumor necrosis factor-like ligand 1A (TL1A), which has been shown to be increased in inflamed intestinal tissue and in the systemic circulation of patients with IBD.

TL1A is a cytokine, a protein functioning as a chemical messenger, that acts as a regulator of cellular immunity. In healthy people, levels of TL1A increase to help immune cells fight infections effectively, with levels going back down after the infection is gone. However, in IBD, TL1A levels are chronically elevated, leading to an excessive buildup of immune cells in the digestive tract, chronic inflammation, tissue damage and fibrosis.

Teams at MSD are evaluating the potential role of TL1A across immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, including Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and systemic sclerosis-associated interstitial lung disease (SSc-ILD). Learn more about our research in immunology.