I’m excited to join you all here today to talk a bit about the Merck Digital Sciences Studio. In fact, the timing is quite miraculous, as one year ago tomorrow, we actually announced the opening of the Merck Digital Sciences Studio. So some of you might be thinking, okay, I’m kind of familiar with that company in the corner up there, and I’ve heard some of the other people speaking here today. So what is the Merck Digital Sciences Studio, and what is it trying to provide to people? So first off, I’d like to start with the value. What are the benefits being offered to the companies that we’re trying to engage with as a collaborative accelerator? First off, it is $150,000 as a safe investment into a range of companies that we assess and look at, $150,000 in Microsoft Azure credits and support, ecosystem and expert access, be it mentors internally and externally, networking across Merck, basically to try to find leaders that’ll be able to help you develop the technologies that you’re trying to bring to market, curriculum and knowledge building resources through programming elements on a semi-weekly basis, as well as monthly events. And finally, a useful thing, but very real for us being here in a physical space, is office space and operational support, actually being able to be hands-on with some of these teams. So what is the studio actually composed of? Well, it is six different corporations coming together, three investors and three operators. So the investors are between Merck GHI, McKesson Ventures and NorthPond Ventures. And on the operator side, it is Merck Research Labs, Microsoft and the New Jersey Innovation Institute. So the way that this program goes about is the investors here are basically responsible for serving as the final selection committee, looking at applications that have been down selected for interview and interrogation, if you will, and following through on the investment participation, as well as supporting those emerging portfolio companies as they consider how they’re progressing, if they’re fundraising later on in the future. And on the operating side, the services are split between the Merck Research Labs team, Jeff Hannigan, who serves as the Executive Director and Founder of this initiative, where he helps with assisting the team’s network internally with research scientists, IT and operating leaders within the company; Microsoft providing resources of navigating how getting set up on the cloud, getting set up on Azure’s marketplace, as well as trying to be multi-cloud and navigating what it looks like to collaborate with a wide range of software services in the ecosystem; and the New Jersey Innovation Institute, which provides work externally, scouting out the initial cohort of companies to engage with and down select for, as well as running the operational programming and providing office space and mentorship to these startups. So what was our cohort selection process like last year? Well, we had 152 applicants initially in our first cohort application window that was like open for about five weeks. We’ve reduced that down to 29 interviews and it resulted in our first cohort of 12 companies. And of those 12 companies, on average they raised over $1 million before joining the MDS studio. So while we thought we’re creating an accelerator for companies who are coming de novo, there was a lot of companies out there who found value trying to work with a wide range of partners in one go. And ultimately our selection model focused on interest alignment and alignment with the community that was put together for this accelerator. So our interests here accelerating digital innovations for drug discovery, development, and delivery. And ultimately that fell upon four big windows in this group, which is AI and ML platforms, Advanced Data combined with hardware, data for advancing knowledge, as well as enabling software capabilities or basically having people improve the tools they’re used to using. So what does our cohort look like at first? Going here pretty fast for everyone here. So these are our 12 companies and each of the faces that you see up there are the CEOs of each of them and they run the gamut. Some companies were brand new and incorporated when they joined the accelerator. Several others came with $1 million to $3 million already committed in investments from either YC, 500 startups, as well as other established investors in the ecosystem. And at the end of the talk I will very briefly give you a rundown of every single company. So with that, I think it’s good for me not to talk but rather the founders themselves talking about their experiences to date. So we are about 7 months into our first 10 month long program and we’ve had a chance to check in with some of the founders and ask them how is this useful for you? Speaking with Gwen at Magna Labs, MDSS has given us credibility approaching biotech customers, valuable insights to accessing pharma IT operations. As you can see it’s been helpful for her both within Merck and other companies within this program as well as externally getting that validation. Similarly for Stephen at Stem Pharm, we’ve been able to help open up and represent for them for potential customers, partners, and investors and how to best position their company for success. Helping them navigate running both their platform, which is traditionally very hardware, very squishy on organoid space, and helping them realize that their platform allows for greater volume of data, greater quality of data, to allow for more rapid discovery. Alright, so what are a few summary take-home points I want to give everyone here? And yes, I am being very efficient for you all. First off is to recap for startups in the audience or watching today. Would love for you to consider applying for our next cohort. Applications are open. We are reviewing early applications now. Our final deadline is August 1^st of this year and our October 2023 is the starting point of our next cohort.

Please go to mds.studio/apply and or scan this QR code and a reminder of the benefits that we’re providing startups there. For the corporates and the investors that are in the audience here today, I would like to spend the last three minutes just quickly running through every company in our first cohort. So just so you have a quick little segment of what’s going on and this is timed. You all don’t have to worry about pulling out a hook for me. So Andson Biotech here to quickly summarize from that description there, basically focuses on improving mass spec allowing for enhanced data from mass spec devices allowing you to take that data and better understand how’s your fermentation process going to your manufacturing of your drugs. For BioCorteX, they’re an advanced knowledge graph system that is able to crawl through the academic literature and find microbiome drug interactions. There’s a primary interest on neuro as well as other drug pathways. Moving on next from this is Celine Therapeutics. Oh wow, the fonts change here has been off. I’m sorry. So Celine is pioneering a novel approach to unlock CAR engineering modalities from CAR-T, CAR-NK and others and they’ve been focused primarily on the discovery of the signaling pathways enabling greater engineering opportunities. Deep Forest Sciences is from the scientific lab at Stanford that pioneered DeepChem and they’re focused on improving AI and ML tools for computational chemistry teams. For Gesund.ai, I mean the quick summary there is like ML ops for medical imaging basically allowing for your teams to develop more resilient machine learning protocols for understanding medical imaging resources and data that you’re generating today. IndyGeneUS AI is a genomics platform focused on improving patient recruitment from Africa and African-American indigenous populations by improving access and data transparency for these members. Further on is Magna Labs which is focused on quality management tools for biometric and bioinformatics software. So, basically improving your software and data science teams looking at bioinformatics and making that a bit more secure, making that a bit more reliable, making it transferable. Pepper Bio is focused on multi-level omics, integrating phosphoproteinomic data along with genomic, transcriptomic and proteinomic data to map the drugging landscape. Already has some pharmaceutical collaborations in hand, and has been actively fundraising. Perceiv AI is focused on precision medicine in neuro, looking at age-related disorders, focused on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s for the near term, looking at taking data from the clinic, helping with better identification of digital biomarkers and bringing them back to drug discoverers. Polygon Health is a direct-to-patient marketplace, allowing patients to unlock their data and participate more in these biobanks and allow for people trying to use real-world data, get access to data that people have trusted to share. SciMAR ONE is an AI-powered platform accelerating development velocity. They focused on helping teens at the later stage of development in pharma get through their Phase III trials, get through organizing across regulatory, competitive intelligence, and many other teams in a multifunctional manner. And finally, Stem Pharm, as I mentioned to you, is a drug discovery platform using 3D human neural organoids that incorporate immuno cells allowing for greater information about what is being uncovered within these neural systems with the drugs that you are developing. And with that, thank you. Glad to be here.