ChemBridge Research Laboratories (CRL) and Merck KGaA announced successful accomplishment of their first collaboration project. In August 2003, CRL entered into a contract research agreement with Merck KGaA to provide CRL's discovery research capabilities to Merck. During the recent collaboration project CRL scientists synthesized multiple series of focused libraries under application of CRL's high-throughput medicinal chemistry platform to complement Merck's in-house lead finding efforts. Further details and financial terms were not disclosed.

"CRL helped us to acquire innovative molecules for our corporate screening collection", said Dr Peter Raddatz, director of Global Medicinal Chemistry at Merck. "The efficient collaboration provided us with new scaffolds and pharmacophores that are yet unprecedented in the literature. We have set high quality standards and CRL met them to our great satisfaction."

"Our excellent experience working together with Merck in Darmstadt has grown into an important and valued partnership for CRL," said Sven Wagner, associate director of Business Development of CRL. "But we were also able to prove once again our ability to deliver discovery research results of high quality in fast iteration to our European partners."