In recent decades, our improved understanding of cancer has illuminated that we cannot treat all cancers as one disease — scientists have classified hundreds of types and found a myriad of genetic drivers underlying them. This means, just as cancer isn’t one disease, there cannot be just one way to treat all cancers. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. These advancements are helping to fuel the next generation of discoveries and drive progress in the way we care for people with all stages of cancer……..Continue reading…..
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The Merck Group, branded and commonly known as Merck, is a German multinational science and technology company headquartered in Darmstadt, with about 60,000 employees and a presence in 66 countries. The group includes around 250 companies; the main company is Merck KGaA in Germany. The company is divided into three business lines: Healthcare, Life Sciences and Electronics.
Merck was founded in 1668 and is the world’s oldest operating chemical and pharmaceutical company, as well as one of the largest pharmaceutical companies globally. Merck operates in Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. It has major research and development centres in Darmstadt, Boston, Tokyo and Beijing, as well as other Research and Development units in Taiwan, France, Israel, South Korea, India, and the UK.
Merck pioneered the commercial manufacture of morphine in the 19th century and for a time held a virtual monopoly on cocaine. Merck was privately owned until going public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 1995 and is listed on the DAX index of Germany’s top companies. The Merck family still controls a majority of 70.3% of the company’s shares.
The Merck Group includes around 250 companies in 180 countries; the current main parent company of the group, since 1995, is named Merck KGaA, and is itself mainly owned by the former main parent company, E. Merck oHG, which now operates as a holding company. The American pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. was established as a subsidiary of Merck in 1891, but was nationalized by the United States in 1917, before being privatized again when George W. Merck, a member of an American branch of the Merck family, repurchased the stock in 1919.
It is known as MSD (Merck Sharp and Dohme) outside of North America. The original Merck of Darmstadt holds the rights to the name Merck in all countries except the U.S. and Canada, where it is known as EMD (Emanuel Merck, Darmstadt), and the life science business specifically is known as MilliporeSigma. In 2015 Merck adopted a uniform brand identity for all its subsidiaries, and the company has stressed its intention to protect the brand of “the real Merck” globally and initiated litigation against its former subsidiary over use of the name.
Merck currently employs over 2,500 people in its 4 R&D hubs via. Boston, Darmstadt, Beijing and Tokyo. In the year 2018, Merck invested over €1,6 billion in its R&D operations. The focus of Merck’s current pharmaceutical R&D is on oncology, neurology and immunology. In oncology, its first marketed product is Erbitux (cetuximab), for which it has marketing rights worldwide, apart from North America. (Cetuximab was discovered by Imclone Systems, and is marketed in North America by Bristol-Myers Squibb.)
Other areas of Expertise from Merck Healthcare include Fertility, Endocrinology and General Medicine, the later focusing on treatments for Diabetes, Thyroid disease and Cardiovascular diseases. Some products from Merck include Metformin, Bisoprolol, Levothyroxine and Digitoxin. Merck’s clinical research strategy consists of a partnership with Quintiles in which the latter helps the former in the clinical development of all its compounds.
In February 2019, Merck also announced a partnership with GSK to develop and commercialize M7824 (bintrafusp alfa*), a new Immunotherapy with potential in various difficult-to-treat cancers. In 2020, Merck launched partnership with Pechoin in China to develop “high-tech herbal” skincare products.
The life science business of Merck, formerly known as Merck Millipore, was created in July 2010 following the completed acquisition of the US company Millipore. This division comprised all Millipore activities and major segments of the former Merck division Performance & Life Science Chemicals. In 2015, Merck acquired Sigma-Aldrich and combined it with Merck Millipore.
The company was branded Merck globally and MilliporeSigma in the United States and Canada The science business of Merck/MilliporeSigma has 300,000 products and three business units: Life Science Services, Science & Lab Solutions, and Process Solutions. The Life Science Services include the Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) and contract testing services. Science & Lab Solutions includes products for Laboratories and Quality Control organizations. Process Solutions supports the biopharma manufacturing processes of its clients with single-use products.
The company has products organized under the brands Sigma-Aldrich, Millipore, SAFC, Supelco, Milli-Q, and Bioreliance. The company serves customers in biotech, pharma, diagnostics, food safety, academia, and environmental. Jean-Charles Wirth serves as the CEO of the life science business of Merck. The Life Science business sponsors several award programs for graduate students.
One of these awards, the Alfred R. Bader Award for Student Innovation recognizes advanced chemistry graduate students, typically in the field of synthetic organic chemistry. Semiconductor Solutions is the largest business unit within Merck’s Electronics business sector. It provides materials, delivery systems, and services for the semiconductor industry. The business unit supplies products for every major production step in the wafer processing, including doping, lithography, patterning, deposition, planarization, etching, and cleaning.
After the acquisition of Intermolecular, its capabilities allow material combinations to be tested directly in the specific application environment accelerating learning cycles. Since the acquisition of Versum and Intermolecular, inc., the company’s portfolio in electronic materials was significantly expanded. The launch of the integrated organization was done on 1 June 2020. Merck started working on effect pigments in 1957. The business unit is called Surface Solutions.
The core markets for Surface Solutions are automotive coatings, cosmetics, and, to a smaller extent, industrials. An example of its pigments is alumina effect pigments sold under the brand name Xirallic. Currently, this business unit pools all activities for pigments in lacquering, printing, and plastic applications, in the field of security technology (for instance counterfeiting protection), pigments for applications in the food and pharmaceutical areas, functional materials, and active substances and pigments for cosmetics.
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