Bayer expands life science partnering presence in Boston with East Coast Innovation Center

Bayer and MassBio gather life science community in Boston to explore how partnerships and innovation drive new solutions and medicines for patients

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Bayer

Mar 15, 2016, 08:00 ET

BOSTON, March 15, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Bayer brings together more than 150 members of the Boston life science community to present its life science innovation and partnership strategy and introduce the newly formed Bayer East Coast Innovation Center. The Center, which will serve as a regional hub to strengthen Bayer's ties to the thriving life science community, expands on the company's existing partnering presence. Today's event is hosted by MassBio, the Massachusetts life science trade association.

"We are excited to engage the broader life science community in Boston and beyond through the Bayer East Coast Innovation Center," said Kemal Malik, member of the Bayer Board of Management responsible for innovation. "By complementing our own capabilities through alliances with excellent partners from industry and academia here in the region, we are well-positioned to translate our combined scientific know-how and research expertise into impactful solutions and medicines for patients."

Bayer's East Coast Innovation Center builds on the company's science and innovation hubs around the world including the U.S. Innovation Center in San Francisco and hubs in Berlin, Beijing, Osaka and Singapore. In both San Francisco and Berlin, Bayer hosts a CoLaborator – a unique incubator space for young life sciences companies with similar therapeutic interests. The new Bayer East Coast Innovation Center will anchor Bayer's presence and enable its teams to deepen relationships and opportunities to influence the discovery and development of new therapeutics.

Bayer's diverse partnering model has already enabled the company to establish a number of other key relationships across therapeutic areas, including:

American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), with which Bayer has a grants-based partnership seeking novel targets and biomarkers in oncology research.
The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where Bayer teams work closely with Broad researchers in joint projects to discover and develop therapeutic agents that selectively target cancer genome alterations and cardiovascular genomics and use information from cardiovascular genomic studies to identify new therapeutic targets.
CRISPR Therapeutics, with which Bayer announced the creation of a joint venture to discover, develop and commercialize new breakthrough therapies to cure blood disorders, blindness and congenital heart disease.
Dimension Therapeutics, with which Bayer is collaborating to develop gene therapy products for hemophilia A.
Johns Hopkins University's Wilmer Eye Institute, with which Bayer holds a joint research and development collaboration focused on developing new ophthalmic therapies.
Versant Ventures, where Bayer invests in a venture capital fund to advance early medical innovation and patient care.

"An important goal of Bayer in the U.S. is to build productive and sustainable partnerships to advance new treatments that improve the lives of patients," said Habib Dable, president of Bayer's U.S. pharmaceuticals division. "We want to be a partner of choice in the industry – one that collaborates effectively with not only scientists from the great research hubs in the U.S., but also clinicians, patient advocates and other key players essential to bringing novel medicines to market."

Bayer: Science For A Better Life

Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the Life Science fields of health care and agriculture. Its products and services are designed to benefit people and improve their quality of life. At the same time, the Group aims to create value through innovation, growth and high earning power. Bayer is committed to the principles of sustainable development and to its social and ethical responsibilities as a corporate citizen. In fiscal 2015, the Group employed around 117,000 people and had sales of EUR 46.3 billion. Capital expenditures amounted to EUR 2.6 billion, R&D expenses to EUR 4.3 billion. These figures include those for the high-tech polymers business, which was floated on the stock market as an independent company named Covestro on October 6, 2015. For more information, go to www.bayer.us.

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Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Bayer's public reports which are available on the Bayer website at www.bayer.com. The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.

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