NUVISAN GmbH with headquarters in Neu-Ulm, Germany, acquires with effect as of 1st of July 2016 a research and development site for Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DPMK) in Grafing (near Munich) from Darmstadt-based Merck-KGaA. The research institute employs about 40 staff members.  

NUVISAN is a medium-sized independent Contract Research Organization (CRO) performing drug trials for pharmaceutical, medical, and biotech companies with a special focus on Bioanalytics and Clinical Pharmacology. Founded in 1979, the NUVISAN group has approximately 250 highly qualified staff working worldwide.

As a result of the transaction NUVISAN aims to expand its current core competencies to include in-vitro and in-vivo DMPK as well as radioisotope syntheses. These services are to be integrated at all three existing sites of NUVISAN. With this broader service portfolio NUVISAN strives to develop as a leading full-service CRO offering all services in the field of clinical drug research and development under one roof.

Merck has been a longstanding customer of NUVISAN prior this transaction and will continue to obtain the services of the Grafing site on the basis of a multi-year master services agreement.

The Merck group is a globally operating, leading science and technology enterprise in the healthcare, life science and performance materials sectors. Merck employs around 50,000 employees worldwide and claims to be the oldest pharmaceutical-chemicals company in the world. The founding family is today still the majority stakeholder of the stock market listed company which is a constituent of the DAX select index compiled by Deutsche Börse.

NUVISAN has been advised during the transaction process by Munich-based law firm TRACC LEGAL (Dr. Thomas Lotz and Dr. Thorsten Steinhaus). The legal advisers of Merck have been inhouse-attorney Rose Brounts and a lawyer team from GÖRG (Michael Heise and Christopher Wright).