MERCACHEM ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF DR. GERHARD MÜLLER AS SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY

Nijmegen, the Netherlands - May 24, 2011. Mercachem is pleased to announce that Dr. Gerhard Müller has joined the management team of Mercachem as Senior Vice President Medicinal Chemistry thus supporting the strong growth of the medicinal chemistry services and projects. Gerhard will be responsible for expanding Mercachem’s activities in Medicinal Chemistry.

Gerhard Müller joins Mercachem from Proteros fragments GmbH, where he had, for the last three years the position of Managing Director and Chief Scientific Officer and he was instrumental in establishing the integrated lead discovery business. Before his step into the contract services industry, Gerhard had the position of Vice President Drug Discovery at GPC Biotech AG, a Munich-based oncology company. Additionally, Gerhard has built a successful track record in lead finding and optimization campaigns at Glaxo, Bayer AG and N.V. Organon, yielding several small molecule development candidates. He gained valuable managerial expertise running entire pre-clinical research departments and having project portfolio management responsibilities. Furthermore, Gerhard developed impressive entrepreneurial skills during the time when he held the position of Chief Scientific Officer at Axxima Pharmceuticals AG in Munich, a company dedicated to protein kinase inhibitor research.

In his career Gerhard has been working on a wide range of different target classes from numerous disease areas, always emphasizing target family-centric medicinal chemistry approaches. Over the last 10 years he specialized in kinase inhibitor research establishing novel design paradigms, proven by numerous peer-reviewed publications. With Gerhard joining Mercachem, the company has relevant industrial expertise within all important drug target classes. Furthermore, Gerhard’s in-depth knowledge on structure-based lead discovery, especially in fragment-based lead generation is a viable addition to the breath of hit and lead finding expertise at Mercachem.

Gerhard will use his experience with multidisciplinary research projects to further expand Mercachem’s capabilities to perform fully integrated drug discovery projects from hit finding over lead discovery and lead optimization to IND-enabling studies. Combining Mercachem’s excellent chemistry expertise and project management with specialized CROs for in vitro, in vivo and safety pharmacology has proven to be successful to successfully customize a discovery project for the sponsor.

Gerhard received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 1992 from the Technical University of Munich, working with Prof. Dr. Horst Kessler on anti-adhesive integrin antagonists.

About Mercachem
Mercachem is a privately owned leading European contract research organization offering innovative discovery chemistry, medicinal chemistry and process R&D services. Mercachem was founded in 1997, occupies 4,000 m2 state-of-the-art research facilities in Nijmegen and employs more than 100 chemists. Working for more than 60 clients in the pharmaceutical, biotech and agrochemical industry, Mercachem is recognized for its high quality standards and services. Mercachem’s strong problem-solving capabilities are supported by a unique knowledge management system and the use of modern research tools and methodologies. Since speed and flexibility are important considerations in current research programs, Mercachem can by using its focused and client-oriented approach, meet the demands and deadlines set by its clients. More information on Mercachem can be found on the company website (www.mercachem.com).

Contact:
Mercachem B.V.
Dr. Frank Leemhuis
Managing Director
Kerkenbos 1013
6564 BB Nijmegen
The Netherlands
Tel. +31-(0)24-3723300
Fax. +31-(0)24-3723305
Email: info@mercachem.com

This release was published on openPR.