Dr. Hans-Peter Ottiger

Merck Animal Health, formerly known as Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health, announced today that the Dieter Lütticken Award, an international annual award dedicated to alternatives in animal testing for veterinary medicines, goes this year to Dr. Hans-Peter Ottiger. He is Head Quality Control and Deputy Head Vaccine Control at the Institute of Virology and Immunoprophylaxis, part of the Swiss Federal Veterinary Office in Mittelhäusern (Switzerland). He will receive the € 20,000 award, which is sponsored by Merck Animal Health for his trend-setting work on the development, optimization and standardization of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays in the extraneous agents testing of inactivated poultry vaccines.

Purity testing currently is an essential quality requirement of immunological veterinary medicinal products and the European Pharmacopoeia requires avian viral vaccines to be free of adventitious agents. Conventional virus detection methods for inactivated avian viral vaccines, laid out in current legislation, includes in vivo seroconversion testing in chicks. PCR testing has many advantages compared to conventional testing, including high specificity, fast turnaround times and it eliminates the use of live animals.

Dr. Ottiger said, "Viral safety is a key issue for veterinary vaccines. Molecular tests can be more sensitive and have a higher level of discrimination than conventional approaches involving experimental animals. They fulfill the requirements of the European Pharmacopoeia and have now been recognized to be a valid alternative method for extraneous agents testing in poultry vaccines."

"Now that the European Pharmacopoeia has proposed earlier this year to abandon the batch safety testing for inactivated vaccines using live animals, vaccine purity testing by PCR may significantly start to contribute to the 3R-principles", added Prof. Coenraad Hendriksen, chair of the expert jury panel and Professor of Alternatives to Animal Testing at Utrecht University (the Netherlands).

Merck Animal Health, a leading global animal health company, sponsors the international Dieter Lütticken Award for alternatives in animal testing for veterinary medicines to support individual scientists and life sciences research institutions that make significant contributions to the 3R-concept, i.e. in reducing, refining and/or replacing the use of animals in testing for development and manufacturing of veterinary medicines. The Company is a member of the European Partnership for Alternative Approaches to Animal Testing (EPAA), a consortium of the European Commission, universities, NGOs and industry. The partners are committed to pooling knowledge, research and resources to accelerate the development, validation and acceptance of alternative approaches to animal testing.

The amount of the award is € 20,000 and will be presented to Dr. Ottiger on August 25, 2011 during the Award Ceremony at the 8th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences which will take place in Montreal (Canada) from August 21-25, 2011 (www.wc8.ccac.ca).

Candidates for the Dieter Lütticken Award are selected by a jury panel composed of experts from public institutions in the animal health and animal testing sector. Applications for the Dieter Lütticken Award 2011 can be submitted until November 15, 2011. For submissions and more details, please contact Merck Animal Health - Global Communications Animal Health (animal-health-communications@merck.com).

*Reference:
Ottiger H-P. Development, standardization and assessment of PCR systems for purity testing of avian viral vaccines. Biologicals 2010;38:381-388.

About the Dieter Lütticken Award
The Dieter Lütticken Award for alternatives for animal testing in veterinary sciences was established in 2004 and is granted to academic scientists or not-for-profit life sciences research institutions that have made a significant contribution to the 3R-concept for the R&D and production of veterinary medicines. The international award's scope covers in vitro models used in R&D which replace animal testing for licensing purposes, methods that improve quality of life of laboratory animals as well as studies aimed at reducing or avoiding the use of animals in efficacy, safety and quality testing in the production of vaccines and pharmaceuticals for animals. The award is named after Dr. Dieter Lütticken, a committed scientist who has guided and shaped R&D at former Intervet for more than 25 years and who retired from Intervet in 2003. Previous winners of the Dieter Lütticken Award are: Prof. Andrew Hemphill, Switzerland (2004), Dr. Mark Stevens, United Kingdom (2006), Prof. George Gettinby, United Kingdom (2007), Dr. Ivo Claassen, the Netherlands (2008) and Dr. Dan Tucker, United Kingdom (2009).

About Merck Animal Health
Today's Merck is a global healthcare leader working to help the world be well. Merck Animal Health, known as MSD Animal Health outside the United States and Canada, is the global animal health business unit of Merck. Merck Animal Health offers veterinarians, farmers, pet owners and governments the widest range of veterinary pharmaceuticals, vaccines and health management solutions and services. Merck Animal Health is dedicated to preserving and improving the health, well-being and performance of animals. It invests extensively in dynamic and comprehensive R&D resources and a modern, global supply chain. Merck Animal Health is present in more than 50 countries, while its products are available in some 150 markets. For more information, visit www.merck-animal-health.com.

Merck & Co., Inc.

Merck & Co., Inc.

At Merck, known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, we are unified around our purpose: We use the power of leading-edge science to save and improve lives around the world. For more than 130 years, we have brought hope to humanity through the development of important medicines and vaccines. We aspire to be the premier research-intensive biopharmaceutical company in the world – and today, we are at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions that advance the prevention and treatment of diseases in people and animals. We foster a diverse and inclusive global workforce and operate responsibly every day to enable a safe, sustainable and healthy future for all people and communities. For more information, visit www.merck.com and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.

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