PharmaTelevision - Merck Goes Back to Basics

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Video title: Merck Goes Back to Basics

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As VP & Head, External Scientific Affairs at Merck & Co., Greg Wiederrecht is responsible for the scientific side of the licensing process. Taking the lead in deal making in the early stages, Dr Wiederrecht looks for strong and innovative science and, with Merck's recent decision to focus on basic research, his role is vital. Here he explains the role of his department and how they work with the global scouts and the corporate licensing group to ensure that deals Merck makes are founded on solid science.

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Role and functions of external scientific affairs.

Fintan Walton:

Hello and welcome to PharmaVentures business review here in Melbourne, Australia. On this show I have Greg Wiederrecht, who is Vice President of External Scientific Affairs at Merck & Co. Welcome to the show.

Greg Wiederrecht:

Thank you Fintan Walton.

Fintan Walton:

Greg Wiederrecht, your role within the Merck organization is quite clear you are Vice President of External Scientific Affairs but it belongs to that family of activities that takes place within Merck which is part of the licensing activities and also the mergers and acquisition activities, so could you help us understand where you're positioned within the organization and how that relates to other parts of the group particularly Barbara Yanni's group for an example?

Greg Wiederrecht:

Okay. Sure I can do that. The External Scientific Affairs is the front end of Merck 's licensing organization. We are located in the Merck Research Labs division of the company where as Barbara Yanni who is our Chief Licensing Officer is in the Corporate Division of the company. We lead at the initial stages of the licensing process, the initial stages of the licensing process constitute all the finding and the filtering of opportunities and we look at about 6,000 opportunities per year. We find opportunities via a number of mechanisms, one of those mechanisms are the World Wide Scouts that we put in place during the past six or seven-years. They are non-transactional, they exist solely to find opportunities, they are organized geographically and they in their regions they have to find all platform and therapeutic area opportunities which they then send in to the headquarters of External Scientific Affairs in Rahway, New Jersey. And then there is a scientific assessment process that's performed by another part of my group, some of the scientific assessment is done by the scientist in my group and some of it the more ones that look quite good are then triaged with subject matter experts in the Merck research labs. And then there is another part of the group who do some of the more modestly sized deals, so Barbara " we work seamlessly with Barbara Yanni's organization on the big biotech 00.03.03 deals.

Fintan Walton:

Right.

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Greg Wiederrecht

Vice President and Head of the External Scientific Affairs

As VP & Head, External Scientific Affairs at Merck & Co, Greg Wiederrecht is responsible for the scientific side of the licensing process. Taking the lead in deal making in the early stages, Dr Wiederrecht looks for strong and innovative science and, with Merck's recent decision to focus on basic research, his role is vital. Here he explains the role of his department and how they work with the global scouts and the corporate licensing group to ensure that deals Merck makes are founded on solid science.

Merck & Co

Merck & Co. is a global research-driven pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures and markets a range of products to improve human and animal health. Established in 1891, the Company's operations are principally managed on a products basis and comprises of two business segments: the Pharmaceutical segment and the Vaccines segment. The Pharmaceutical segment includes human health pharmaceutical products marketed either directly or through joint ventures. Merck sells these human health pharmaceutical products primarily to drug wholesalers and retailers, hospitals, government agencies and managed health care providers, such as health maintenance organizations, pharmacy benefit managers and other institutions. The Vaccines segment includes human health vaccine products marketed either directly or through a joint venture. These products consist of preventative pediatric, adolescent and adult vaccines, primarily administered at physician offices.