Theratechnologies Inc T.TH

Merck

[qwerty22]

1

Mer­ck KGaA spot­lights need for deals to shake up R&D, with ex­ter­nal part­ners key to new drugs

by Kyle LaHucik

Ger­man health­care com­pa­ny Mer­ck KGaA wants to ramp up its R&D pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with the goal of launch­ing a new drug, or tack­ing on a new in­di­ca­tion to an ap­proved med, every one and a half years. To get there, the life sci­ences and health tech com­pa­ny will beef up its ex­ter­nal work through in-li­cens­ing and strate­gic part­ner­ships.

The more than three-cen­tu­ry-old com­pa­ny out­lined a fu­ture in which more than half of its new launch­es will come from ex­ter­nal in­no­va­tors and the pipeline roadmap will fo­cus on on­col­o­gy, neu­rol­o­gy and im­munol­o­gy. As of now, the com­pa­ny's ther­a­peu­tics pipeline con­sists of four ex­ter­nal­ly-de­rived mol­e­cules and nine in-house ones, ac­cord­ing to an up­date this month.

Tucked in­to the Mon­day pre­sen­ta­tion, the Frank­furt-area com­pa­ny said it would con­vert "the R&D to lean­er or­ga­ni­za­tion fo­cused on flaw­less ex­e­cu­tion and re­source dis­ci­pline."

"As we said in the R&D Up­date Call, we are con­tin­u­ous­ly look­ing in­to the struc­ture, size and process­es in the or­ga­ni­za­tion," a Mer­ck KGaA spokesper­son said in an emailed state­ment to End­points News in re­sponse to a ques­tion about whether "lean­er or­ga­ni­za­tion" means lay­offs. Big Phar­ma em­ploy­ees have not been im­mune to the wave of lay­offs that has crashed in­to the biotech in­dus­try this year, with No­var­tis be­ing the prime ex­am­ple.

Mer­ck KGaA touts 6,200 R&D work­ers across Ger­many, the US, UK, Japan, Tai­wan, Chi­na, Is­rael, France and South Ko­rea.

“We are dri­ven by our am­bi­tion to ac­cel­er­ate the dis­cov­ery, de­vel­op­ment and de­liv­ery of in­no­v­a­tive med­i­cines to pa­tients with can­cer and neu­roin­flam­ma­to­ry and im­mune-me­di­at­ed dis­eases,” Mer­ck KGaA's health­care CMO, Dan­ny Bar-Zo­har, said in a state­ment

[Biobob]

What collaboration did Th had with Merk AG in the past... I remember it was whit the german arm of Merk then wich was a seperate entity than the US parent now....