PHARMACEUTICALS
C R E D I T: CA R ME L LA BS
Germany’s Merck eyes consumer products exit Today’s pharmaceutical companies have a love-hate relationship with the over-the-counter drug business. OTC drugs are steady sellers that don’t require a lot of risky R&D. But they don’t bring high profits either. Germany’s Merck KGaA has decided it isn’t fond of the OTC business and is exploring options to leave the field. The firm says it doesn’t have the scale to compete in OTC drugs and that they don’t fit anymore with its focus on science and technology. Merck’s OTC business, which it calls consumer health, had sales last year of about $1 billion. It markets products such as Bion vitamins and Seven Seas cod liver oil. Some drug companies have embraced the OTC business as a calm hedge against the stormy ups and downs of discovering new, patented drugs. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has long run an OTC business with wellknown brands such as Tylenol and Benadryl. Sanofi paid almost $2 billion in 2010 to acquire the U.S. OTC drugmaker Chattem; last year it took over Boehringer Ingelheim’s OTC unit. In 2014, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis announced that they would combine their consumer health businesses into a joint venture with about $11 billion in annual sales. Also that year, Bayer acquired Merck & Co.’s OTC drug business for $14 billion. In addition to these firms, a possible acquirer of the Merck business is Reckitt Benckiser, which has acquired OTC lines from Bristol-Myers Squibb and others in recent years. In 2014, Reckitt acknowledged aborted talks to acquire Merck & Co.’s OTC drug business.—MICHAEL MCCOY
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Start-up sues L’Oréal over antiaging ingredient Use of adenosine to erase wrinkles is at the heart of a David versus Goliath dispute ee of the university’s patents. In their suit, A religious group has filed suit against the Teresians allege that L’Oréal attempted L’Oréal claiming that the cosmetics giant to file its own adenosine use patent in infringed on patents covering use of the nucleoside adenosine in wrinkle-erasing NH2 2002, but the big firm later abandoned it because of the creams that the charity sells to raise monN ey for the poor. L’Oréal says it did N preexisting university patents. In 2003, L’Oréal tried to linot violate the group’s patents. HO N N cense the university’s patents According to the suit, filed O but didn’t succeed. in Delaware federal court, the In court documents responding Massachusetts-based Teresian Carmelites introduced Easeamine, OH OH to the Teresians’ complaint, L’Oréal says its Youth Code formulas use a high-end antiwrinkle cream conAdenosine adenosine at concentrations not taining adenosine, in 2009. Easecovered by the university’s patents. The amine sales were initially strong, say the firm has asked the court to dismiss the Teresians, who describe themselves as a Teresians’ suit, which seeks unspecified “Christian monastery dedicated to prayer, damages and a permanent injunction contemplation, and service to the poor.” against L’Oréal’s sale of competing skin But in 2010, as the Teresians were care products. about to expand their skin care line, L’Oréal tells C&EN in an email that L’Oréal launched its competing Youth “While we admire the purpose of the work Code brand of antiaging skin products [the Teresians and Carmel Labs] are doing featuring adenosine. Sales of Easeamine, together, we find no merit in [their] allethrough the Teresians’ for-profit Carmel gations. We expressed this point of view Labs arm, didn’t meet the group’s expecin many conversations (some in person) tations, and they were unable to pay their we had with the Teresian Carmelites and monastery’s mortgage. their outside legal advisers over the past Adenosine has long been known to play two years.” an important role in biochemical processL’Oréal is enmeshed in at least one es such as energy transfer. Pharmaceutiother dispute with a cal-grade adenosine is start-up over allegedly also used to treat heart Easeamine day cream with conditions. adenosine costs $76 for a 1-oz jar. stolen technology. Late last year, OlaTwo University of plex, the maker of a Massachusetts Medical product that protects School researchers, hair during bleaching James G. Dobson Jr. and color treatments, and Michael Ethier, dissought an injunction covered that topical apagainst L’Oréal and plication of adenosine, unspecified damages its derivatives, and anafor its similar hair logs, could enhance the treatment. skin’s condition. They The Olaplex lawsuit patented their discovcharged that L’Oréal’s ery in 2002 and 2003. use of maleic acid in “This extraordinary hair treatments, such as breakthrough was uncovRedken pH-Bonder and ered during a medical Matrix Bond Ultim8, study on how aging violated Olaplex pataffects heart function,” ents licensed from two the Teresians say on University of California, their website. Santa Barbara, polymer In 2008, the Teresians scientists.—MARC REISCH became the exclusive licensSEPTEMBER 11, 2017 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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