Swiss businessman Ernesto Bertarelli, former owner of biotech Serono, is bidding to buy back the Geneva R&D facility that was once the showpiece of his biotech empire and turn it into a life sciences incubator and center for translational medicine.

Merck Serono employees stage a die-in demonstration last summer in Geneva to protest against plans to close the Swiss branch. Credit: Salvatore Di Nolfi/Epa/Newscom

Bertarelli sold the family-owned Serono to Merck KgaA of Darmstadt, Germany, for $13.3 billion in 2007. But in April 2012, following a string of failures—notably the decision in June 2011 not to pursue US Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency approval of Movectro (cladribine), a purine analog oral treatment for multiple sclerosis—Merck KgaA announced that it was shutting the Geneva R&D facility, where 1,250 people were employed (Nat. Biotechnol. 30, 569–570, 2012). The brain drain began immediately: by the end of January, 280 employees had accepted the offer to move to another Merck Serono site, with 110 of these going abroad, another 390 finding jobs with other employers and 80 deciding to take early retirement.

At the heart of the new venture will be an institute endowed by fellow Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and modeled on the Wyss Institute he established at Harvard University. Wyss's foundation will donate CHF125 ($135) million over six years to the new institute, which is being set up as a public-private partnership in cooperation with École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Geneva.

A spokesman for EPFL said the institute will complement existing research at the Polytechnique by increasing the rate of technology transfer and “providing a place to mature these technologies.” The near-market institute will create ten new labs specializing in fields including immunoengineering, neuroengineering and regenerative medicine, employing 120–150 people.

The spokesman said it is not clear whether new posts will be filled by Merck Serono staff facing the loss of their jobs in mid-2013 when Merck KgaA goes ahead with restructuring plans and ends its R&D activities at the Geneva facility, or by researchers currently employed by EPFL and the University of Geneva, or by new recruits.

On a brighter note for the local biotech cluster, a seed fund set up by Merck to support spin-outs based on R&D carried out at the Geneva facility has backed the formation of five new companies employing 38 staff. These are Prexton Therapeutics, specializing in Parkinson's disease; Quartz Bio, a bioinformatics services provider; and Asceneuron, which is developing Tau-based treatments for Alzheimer's disease.

A spokesman for Bertarelli says the initiative is intended to retain talent and “energize” the future of the biotech sector on the region. “It is our hope that this bid will secure these skills for many years to come and realize a vision for the Lake Geneva region as a continuing home for biotechnology,” he adds.

Although the project is “complex,” the partners are confident that it can be delivered if they succeed in acquiring the site, Bertarelli's spokesman says. Merck itself declined to comment on the proposal while negotiations on the sale of the R&D site are in progress.