Merz Pharmaceuticals Outsources Compound Management to BioAscent

BioAscent and Merz Pharmaceuticals GmbH, part of the Merz Pharma Group, have entered into a Master Service Agreement (MSA), under which BioAscent provides a comprehensive outsourced compound management service for a significant part of Merz Pharmaceutical’s compound collection, in both solid and liquid forms.

The compound management MSA is part of Merz Pharmaceutical’s outsourcing strategy to improve operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Under the agreement, which has been in operation since August 2016, BioAscent is responsible for the storage, plating, distribution, logistics and tracking of Merz Pharmaceutical’s compounds, supplying screen-ready plates as and when they are required. BioAscent’s Newhouse facility offers pharma and biotech companies scalable and highly secure infrastructure, with the flexibility to manage solid and liquid compounds in a wide range of tubes and microplates, between ambient and -20 °C. As well as having the infrastructure and specialist skills, BioAscent uses Titian Software’s industry-leading Mosaic sample management software for efficient transfer of data.

“Having reviewed the tender submissions, it was clear that BioAscent’s capabilities and management team were ideal for our requirements”, said Dr. Ulrich Abel, Principal Scientific Expert Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Merz. “Having made the decision to outsource our compound management to BioAscent, we have been very happy with the service; we have complete control and our requests are managed accurately and promptly. We were also really pleased with the ease of the hand-over process, which was less than one week, during which there was no overall disruption to our screening workflow.”

Dr Sylviane Boucharens, BioAscent’s COO/CSO commented: “Our facilities offer significant advantages for small to medium size organisations which may not have the day-to-day screening requirements to justify the investment in compound management equipment and facilities. Our modern facility - a former Pharma research site - has everything in place so that we can cost-effectively manage compound collections for screening workflows on an outsourced basis.”