Serono
| Company type | S.A |
|---|---|
| Industry | Biotechnology Pharmaceutical |
| Founded | 1906 |
| Founder | Cesare Serono |
| Defunct | 2006 |
| Fate | Acquired by Merck Group |
| Successor | Merck Serono |
| Headquarters | Geneva, Switzerland (former Headquarters) |
Key people | Claudio Bertarelli (Chairman) Ernesto Bertarelli (CEO) |
| Products | Rebif Gonal-f Luveris Ovidrel/Ovitrelle Serostim Saizen Zorbtive Raptiva |
| Parent | Merck Group |
Serono was a biotechnology company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It was acquired by the German pharmaceutical company Merck in 2006. The company was founded as the Serono Pharmacological Institute by Cesare Serono in 1906 in Rome, Italy. Serono was incorporated in 1987 and the holding company, Ares-Serono S.A., changed its name to Serono S.A. in May 2000, the same year that its CEO, Ernesto Bertarelli, led a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
Serono developed and marketed pharmaceuticals in the fields of reproductive health, multiple sclerosis, growth & metabolism and dermatology. A key step in its development was the discovery of a method of extracting urinary gonadotropins by Dr. Piero Donini. A decade after his discovery, a partnership with Professor Bruno Lunenfeld led to gonadotropins being able to become a widely available and commercially successful treatment for infertility, marketed by the company as Pergonal. Serono obtained the biological material for the gonoadtropin extraction from the urine of Italian nuns, thanks to the connections of one of its board members, Giulio Pacelli, who was the nephew of Pope Pius XII.
A particular commercial success was its drug, REBIF, used to treat Multiple Scleroris. Introduced in 1998 to treat relapsing-remitting MS, the most common form of the degenerative disease. By 1999 it had generated $143 million in sales, but was barred by provisions of the Orphan Drug Act from entering the US market, where Biogen’s treatment, Avonex, held orphan status. Bertarelli and Serono invested significant resources into a clinical trial to try to demonstrate the clinical superiority of their treatment. The trial was successful and the company was able to enter the US market. By 2002, REBIF accounted for 39% of Serono’s sales.
The company also conducted research in oncology and autoimmune diseases. Through the acquisition in 1997 of GBRI from GlaxoWelcome, becoming its Geneva based research institute named SPRI, and the Manteia Predictive Medicine spin-off, Serono also nursed the emergence of massive parallel sequencing technology.