About the Authors

Margaret Wu

Affiliation Early Development and Discovery Sciences, Merck Research Laboratories, Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Whitehouse Station, NJ 08889, United States of America

Ge Dai

Affiliation Early Development and Discovery Sciences, Merck Research Laboratories, Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Whitehouse Station, NJ 08889, United States of America

Jun Yao

Affiliation Early Development and Discovery Sciences, Merck Research Laboratories, Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Whitehouse Station, NJ 08889, United States of America

Scott Hoyt

Affiliation Early Development and Discovery Sciences, Merck Research Laboratories, Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Whitehouse Station, NJ 08889, United States of America

Liangsu Wang

Affiliation Early Development and Discovery Sciences, Merck Research Laboratories, Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Whitehouse Station, NJ 08889, United States of America

James Mu

yingjun_mu@merck.com

Affiliation Early Development and Discovery Sciences, Merck Research Laboratories, Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Whitehouse Station, NJ 08889, United States of America

Competing Interests

All authors are current employees of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, and may own stock or hold stock options in Merck. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JM MW LW. Performed the experiments: MW GD JY. Analyzed the data: MW GD JY JM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SH. Wrote the paper: JM SH LW.