Boehringer Ingelheim to Acquire Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen to Strengthen its Next Generation Cancer Immunology Program
9.12.2020 12:00:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
Boehringer Ingelheim today announced the execution of the agreement on the acquisition of Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen. The acquisition will enable Boehringer Ingelheim to further expand and accelerate its comprehensive program for the development of ATMP-based immuno-oncology therapies including the Vesicular Stomatitis Virus (VSV) with modified glycoprotein (GP) platform and cancer vaccines platforms. Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen has outstanding experience in process development, manufacturing and analytical characterization in virology besides expertise in microbiology and cell culture. Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen has already worked in close collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim on viral-based therapy development since 2015.
“The acquisition of Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen is strengthening our promising pipeline with diverse potential first-in-class cancer immunology and cancer cell directed therapies for patients with hard-to-treat cancer,” said Dr. Michel Pairet, member of Boehringer Ingelheim’s Board of Managing Directors with responsibility for the company’s Innovation Unit. “The trusting and highly effective collaboration between our scientists and the Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen team has already contributed significantly to our progress in viral-based cancer therapies. We will welcome the Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen team and look forward to jointly advancing our program in this area.”
Boehringer Ingelheim is taking cancer on by strengthening its position in cancer immunology, with a focus on cancer vaccines, oncolytic viruses, T-cell engagers, stromal modulators and myeloid cell modulators by combining its world-class, in-house research and development with that of highly innovative external companies. The addition of Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen’s site will enable Boehringer Ingelheim to further strengthen its oncolytic virus and cancer vaccine development capabilities and capacities by establishing an end-to-end fully integrated center of excellence for virus development and clinical manufacturing. It will add to a series of strategic acquisitions and collaborations over the past years, including the acquisition of ViraTherapeutics and AMAL Therapeutics, which are contributing assets that will be further developed at Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen’s site.
Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen is a privately-held company founded in 1971. It is headquartered in Ochsenhausen, Germany, close to Boehringer Ingelheim’s Biberach R&D site. As a center of excellence in virology, Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen has a long track record in GLP and GMP certified biosafety testing. In recent years Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen established its GMP-virus manufacturing facility. With around 130 highly qualified and specialized employees, the company has built considerable expertise in process development, manufacturing and analytical characterization of viral therapeutics and oncolytic viral therapeutics. Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen will be integrated with all employees as a new unit into Boehringer Ingelheim’s Development organization and continue to operate at its Ochsenhausen site. A future expansion is planned.
“Following our successful strategic partnership, we are really excited to join forces with Boehringer Ingelheim,” said Dr. Ingrid Rapp, CEO at Labor Dr. Merk & Kollegen. “Boehringer Ingelheim is a truly global pharmaceutical company with excellent R&D capacities. We look forward to taking our next development step in oncology as part of this outstanding team.”
The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal. The transaction is subject to the approval of the competition authorities in Germany. Closing will follow thereafter.
Please click on the following link for ‘Notes to Editors’:
http://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/press-release/agreement-acquire-labor-dr-merk
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201209005383/en/
Contact information
Boehringer Ingelheim
Dr. Reinhard Malin
Head of Communications Innovation Unit
Boehringer Ingelheim Corporate Center GmbH
Media + PR
P: +49 6132 77-90815
press@boehringer-ingelheim.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Nippon Electric Glass’s IR Transmitting Glass “FI-02” Adopted for Heimann Sensor Lens Unit, Enabling a 120° × 68° Field of View16.9.2026 04:00:00 EEST | Press release
Nippon Electric Glass Co., Ltd. (NEG) (TOKYO: 5214), a global leader in specialty glass headquartered in Otsu, Japan, announced that its IR Transmitting Glass (chalcogenide glass) “FI-02” has been adopted for Heimann Sensor GmbH’s wide-angle lens unit for thermal cameras. The lens unit achieves a 120° × 68° field of view, surpassing the previous product’s maximum of 92° × 59°. The adoption marks a significant milestone for FI-02 and showcases how advanced specialty glass can meet the demanding optical and manufacturing requirements of the expanding infrared sensing market. Thermal cameras detect infrared radiation emitted by people or objects and convert it into thermal images. Infrared sensors can detect the locations of people and temperature distributions. They are expected to be used for people detection and monitoring, where privacy considerations are important, and for air-conditioning control, while their use is expanding in healthcare, equipment monitoring, and security. Advanc
Workiva Advances Regulatory Work with AI Innovation15.9.2026 18:00:00 EEST | Press release
Workiva Inc. (NYSE: WK), a leading, audit-ready platform for trust, transparency, and accountability, unveiled dozens of new product and platform innovations at Amplify 2026, the company’s annual conference attended by thousands of finance, accounting, sustainability, risk, and compliance leaders. Workiva Debuts Agent Studio Workiva introduced Agent Studio, a landmark platform capability that empowers users to quickly build, customize, and deploy AI agents in Workiva's trusted platform. By combining AI reasoning with Workiva's native platform capabilities, enterprise knowledge, and governed workflows, Agent Studio enables users to automate sophisticated manual business processes without writing any code. Organizations can enrich agents with company-specific knowledge and context, tailor them to their own processes, and schedule automations to execute recurring work. “With Agent Studio, we're putting the power to build in the hands of the people who know the work and their company the b
Study: Heatwaves Increase Cough Urge, Which Salt Aerosols Reduce15.9.2026 16:15:00 EEST | Press release
SC Therapeutics, with University North Carolina, Imperial College London, and Boston University, announced publication on Tuesday in Nature Scientific Reports of results from a multi-institutional study indicating that the aridity inherent in heatwaves increases cough hypersensitivity in human airways by collapsing mucus onto cilia in a manner common to chronic respiratory diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, and asthma. The researchers find that alkaline aerosols of magnesium salts reverse mucosal collapse for several hours, and reduce cough hypersensitivity as reflected in placebo-adjusted suppression of daily cough bout rate (59%, p=0.03) and persistence of suppression post treatment for 1 to 3 weeks in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 10 refractory chronic cough patients. “Paris recorded 5,764 excess deaths between 17 June and 2 July, a period of time during which we report atmospheric aridity in the city increased approximately 3-fold relative to the 35 year a
ADM’s Fourth Annual Regenerative Agriculture Report Highlights Growing Resilience Across the Food System15.9.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
ADM (NYSE: ADM), a global leader in innovative solutions from nature, today released its fourth annual regenerative agriculture report, showing how its programs are supporting farmers, strengthening agricultural supply chains and delivering measurable environmental outcomes around the world. “Resilience starts on the farm. By improving and protecting soil health, farmers can be better equipped to adapt to changing conditions and maintain productive operations,” said Greg Morris, SVP and President, Ag Services and Oilseeds, ADM. “That resilience can extend across the value chain, helping strengthen the food system we all depend on.” In 2025, ADM’s regenerative agriculture programs engaged more than 56,000 farmers across approximately 4.6 million acres, 11 countries and 10 crops. Compared with regional benchmarks, the programs resulted in approximately 946,000 metric tons of CO₂e reductions. “ADM views agriculture as a powerful way to meet evolving customer needs, and our work in regener
Diligent Unveils New Agentic Capabilities in Diligent One to Power the Future of Governance, Risk and Compliance15.9.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Diligent, the AI leader in governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions, today announced a major enhancement to Diligent One, its native AI platform, at Gartner’s Enterprise Risk, Audit and Compliance Conference (ERAC). This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260915941016/en/ “For many organizations, GRC work is slowed by fragmented systems, manual coordination and time-consuming reporting processes,” said Brian Stafford, President and CEO of Diligent. “Our latest agentic capabilities help teams cut through that complexity by connecting context, surfacing what matters and driving faster execution — while keeping governance and professional judgement at the center." An orchestration agent that coordinates work and approvals The orchestration agent in Diligent One gives GRC professionals a natural-language interface to coordinate audit and risk work. Instead of simply answering questions, it enables users to describe
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom