Merck Contributes To A La Jolla Nonprofit

Pharmaceutical giant Merck announced today that it will be teaming up with a local La Jolla Institute to fund biomedical research.

Merck plans to invest up to $90 million in the California Institute for Biomedical Research over the next seven years.

Peter Shultz, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute and one of the founders of the institute said the goal of the new nonprofit is to act as a liaison between researchers and pharmaceutical companies to speed up the drug-development process.

“And so what we really want to do is create an institute that does free clinical drug discovery translational research, collaborates with academics throughout the world who have interesting discoveries that might have a biomedical or medical impact, and move those toward the clinic.”

The institute is expected to be up and running in the next two weeks, Swartz said. Up to 150 new jobs are expected.