On February 20, Merck inaugurated its first cGMP quality Oligonucleotides* (oligos) manufacturing suite in its Life Science Hub in St. Louis, Missouri (US).

With 4,200 square feet, the new facility will allow the company – which has a long history of serving academic and industrial oligo customers since 1986 – to expand its offerings to diagnostic and clinical markets. Once fully-operational, it will bring a 7.5X capacity increase for the company’s cGMP oligo business this year.

Oligos are a critical raw material commonly used in Covid-19 PCR tests, but they also are used in diagnostic kits for a number of applications such as infectious diseases, oncology, pre-natal testing, genetic screening, among others. The non-Covid molecular diagnostics market is expected to grow almost 9% from 2020 to 2026, totalling 14,392 million USD (according to Kalorama).

*cGMP conditions within an ISO 14644-1:2015 Class 8 classified cleanroom.