Danny Bar-Zohar, Merck KGaA healthcare CMO

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

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.

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