Merck completes acquisition of Austrian vaccine developer Themis Bioscience

Pharma giant Merck has wrapped up its previously announced acquisition of Austrian vaccine developer Themis Bioscience.

The Austrian company is focused on developing vaccines and immune-modulation therapies for infectious diseases and cancer.

Merck announced the deal last month in a move to gain access to Themis Bioscience’s coronavirus vaccine candidate. Read more about Merck acquisition of Themis Bioscience here.

The transaction was cleared by the US Federal Trade Commission and prior to that Merck had secured merger control clearance from the Austrian Federal Competition Authority.

Themis is now a fully-owned subsidiary of Merck.

The pharma giant said that it will initially focus on speeding up the development of Themis Bioscience’s measles vector-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate, which is presently in pre-clinical development. Clinical studies of the coronavirus vaccine candidate are targeted to begin later this year.