Tuesday, October 14, 2008

EMD Serono backs $2M collaborative grants from Michael J. Fox Foundation

By Mass High Tech Staff

Life sciences company EMD Serono Inc. funded a $2 million grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research to study possible treatments for the cognitive and mood-related symptoms associated with Parkinson’s disease. The award program calls for EMD to partner with five teams of international researchers who will initiate preclinical and clinical studies in Parkinson’s-related dementia, depression, apathy and anxiety.

The five investigators leading the program will be Eugenia Gurevich of Vanderbilt University; John Growdon of Harvard University; Ben Schmand of Academic Medical Center in The Netherlands; Connie Marras of the University of Toronto; and Celeste Napier of Rush University. The Michael J. Fox Foundation was launched in 2000 and has granted $128 million in research awards to the life sciences community to date.

Rockland-based EMD Serono is the U.S. business unit of the German pharmaceutical firm Merck KGaA. The firm employs about 650 workers in Billerica and Rockland, as well as 200 more employees around the United States, according to company officials.

In April EMD Serono stated it planned to invest $50 million to expand its facilities in Billerica for drug research, and would add more than 100 workers. The company said it plans to begin construction of the 125,000-square-foot expansion in Billerica in early 2009 and complete the project in 2010. The company now operates a protein production facility in Billerica, and the facilities are expected to total 210,000 square feet of lab and manufacturing space once the addition is complete.