Merck partners with Protillion Biosciences on AI-powered protein drug design, offering up to $510 million（約820億円） in milestone payments as biopharma giants race to embed machine learning into drug development.

What happened: Merck signed a collaboration with California-based Protillion Biosciences to use the company's Prot-MaP technology, a data generation platform designed to train protein design AI models. Merck is making an undisclosed upfront payment plus up to $510 million（約820億円） in R&D and commercial milestones, with both companies planning to work on multiple therapies without naming specific targets or disease areas yet.

Why it matters: Big pharmaceutical companies are increasingly turning to AI to speed up and improve drug discovery. Merck's move is part of a wave—Eli Lilly has committed up to $2.25 billion（約3600億円） to another AI biotech, and Bristol Myers Squibb and Incyte have also struck recent AI partnerships. Protillion's platform promises to help identify protein therapy candidates at scale while ensuring they can actually be manufactured, which could accelerate Merck's ability to find and develop new drugs.

What to watch: The collaboration covers multiple therapies but the companies have not disclosed which disease areas or specific milestones they are targeting, so the concrete impact of this partnership will only become clear as results emerge.