Episode
Historic Biotech IPO, Merck, Protillion’s AI Deal, Testing a Lassa–Rabies Vaccine
- Podcast
- Touching Base
- Published
- Jun 18, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2082
- Processing state
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- https://shows.acast.com/touching-base/episodes/historic-biotech-ipo-merck-protillions-ai-deal-testing-a-las
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Summary
We are still talking about big pharma deals and biotech fundraising in this episode. The big news this week was Parabilis Medicines’s history-making IPO. We dive into the drug developer’s plans for the eye-popping $770.5 million that it raised. Next, we discuss the details of a collaboration between Merck and Protillion Biosciences to use artificial intelligence to discover multiple therapeutic candidates. Turning to some newly published research, we discuss the early results of a first-in-human clinical trial that is testing a dual vaccine against Lassa fever and rabies, a CRISPR system engineered to selectively trigger cancer cell death by chromatin shredding, and a novel mRNA delivery platform for delivering gene therapies starting with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Join GEN editors Corinna Singleman, PhD, Alex Philippidis, Uduak Thomas, and Fay Lin, PhD, for a discussion of the latest biotech and biopharma news. Listed below are links to the GEN stories referenced in this episode of Touching Base : StockWatch: Parabilis Medicines Makes Wall Street History with $770.5M IPO By Alex Philippidis, GEN Edge , June 14, 2026 Merck, Protillion Launch AI Drug Discovery Collaboration with Up-to-$510M in Milestone Payments By Alex Philippidis, GEN Edge , June 16, 2026 First-in-Human Trial Reports Promising Dual Lassa–Rabies Vaccine Data GEN , June 9, 2026 CRISPR Shreds Undruggable Cancer Cells with Precision By Fay Lin, PhD, GEN Edge , June 8, 2026 New mRNA Delivery Platform Restores Muscle Function in DMD Models GEN , June 11, 2026 Touching Base Podcast Hosted by Corinna Singleman, PhD Behind the Breakthroughs Hosted by Jonathan D. Grinstein, PhD Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.