Excellent announcement primarily because Merck are prepared to...

Excellent announcement primarily because Merck are prepared to put their name to it NOW....rather than undertake Trials behind closed doors (which they can if they coose to).
Clearly Merck have seen enough to excite them into going down the present path ...publicly.
In the event of good results from the Trial... starting next year... no doubt Merck will write out a big cheque to VLA... then undertake all future costs in a Phase 3 Trial.
Now let's see if the market continues to be underwhelmed... 50 - 50 chance of that happening, given historical reactions.