Schering-Plough completes acquisition of Organon BioSciences

Schering-Plough has announced that it has completed the acquisition of Organon Biosciences from Akzo Nobel for 11 billion euros (7.8 million pounds).

The acquisition was agreed in March this year with Schering-Plough taking over all divisions of the company.

This includes Organon – the human health business, but also Intervet – an animal health business, Nobilon – a human vaccine development unit and Diosynth – a third-party manufacturing unit.

Fred Hassan, chairman and chief executive officer of Schering-Plough, confirmed that the acquisition would allow the company to grow even stronger and better in “our people products and science”.

“Through this combination we create a powerful science and technology platform. We expand and strengthen Schering-Plough’s late-stage Rx pipeline with five additional promising Phase III compounds.”

He went on to welcome the expansion in its biologics manufacturing capability as a result of the acquisition.

Schering-Plough will also expand into two prescription pharmaceutical franchises, women’s health and central nervous system, which Hassan describes as adding to the company’s current strength in cardiovascular care, respiratory, immunology and oncology.

Also this week, Merck, Sharp and Dohme and Schering-Plough announced the meeting of an independent clinical and biostatistics panel to provide an update on the Enhance study comparing the use of Inegy with simvastatin in patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia.