NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Merck’s Rosetta Biosoftware unit will be unaffected by the pharma giant’s recently announced restructuring, a Rosetta spokesperson told GenomeWeb Daily News today.
In late October, Merck announced plans to lay off 7,200 employees worldwide and to close basic research sites in Tsukuba, Japan; Pomezia, Italy; and Seattle. The Seattle site is the home of Rosetta Inpharmatics, which Merck acquired in 2001 for $620 million. Since then, the Rosetta group has primarily served a research function for Merck, with the exception of the software business, which operated as a separate unit under the name of Rosetta Biosoftware.
Merck plans to move around 100 of the 300 Rosetta Inpharmatics employees to its research center in Boston, but Rosetta Biosoftware, which employs 60 people, plans on staying put, according to Kristen Stoops, senior director of marketing and alliances at Rosetta Biosoftware.
“It’s business as usual” for the software unit, Stoops said. “There has been no impact on our daily business operations, nor do we foresee any impact.”
Stoops said that there are no plans to relocate the software business, which will continue to operate “unaltered” despite the changes planned for the Rosetta Inpharmatics group.
Stoops acknowledged that there is a possibility that Merck may spin out Rosetta Biosoftware as an independent entity, but she noted that that option has “always been on the table” for the bioinformatics business.