Sigma-Aldrich (formally MilliporeSigma) is an American chemical,

life science Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, respon ...

, and

biotechnology Biotechnology is a multidisciplinary field that involves the integration of natural sciences and Engineering Science, engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms and parts thereof for products and services. Specialists ...

company owned by the multinational chemical conglomerate

Merck Group The Merck Group, branded and commonly known as Merck, is a German Multinational corporation, multinational science and technology company headquartered in Darmstadt, with about 60,000 employees and a presence in 66 countries. The group include ...

. Sigma-Aldrich was created in 1975 by the

merger Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of a company, business organization, or one of their operating units is transferred to or consolidated with another entity. They may happen through direct absorpt ...

of Sigma Chemical Company and Aldrich Chemical Company. It grew through various acquisitions until it had over 9,600 employees and was listed on the

Fortune 1000 {{location map+ , United States , float=right , width=400, relief=1 , caption=''Fortune'' 1000 company headquarters locations. Top 20 companies labeled, places= {{location map~ , United States , lat= 36.365378 , long= -94.217629 , label= Walmart, ...

. The company has two United States headquarters, in

St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...

and

Burlington, MA Burlington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 26,377 at the 2020 census. History It is believed that Burlington takes its name from the English town of Bridlington, Yorkshire, but this has never ...

and has operations in approximately 40 countries. In 2015, the multinational chemical conglomerate Merck Group acquired Sigma-Aldrich for $17 billion. The company is currently a part of Merck's life science business and in combination with Merck's earlier acquired Millipore, operates as MilliporeSigma.About Us, EMD Millipore + Sigma-Aldrich = MilliporeSigma, The life science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
/ref> It is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, United States.

History

Sigma Chemical Company of

and Aldrich Chemical Company of

Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...

were both American specialty chemical companies when they merged in August 1975. The company grew throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with significant expansion in facilities, acquisitions and diversification into new market sectors.

Early history

* 1935 – Midwest Consultants was founded in

St Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...

by brothers Aaron Fischer and Bernard Fischlowitz, who hired chemical engineer Daniel Broida. ** 1946 – Sigma was formed from Midwest Consultants and manufactured just

adenosine triphosphate Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is a nucleoside triphosphate that provides energy to drive and support many processes in living cell (biology), cells, such as muscle contraction, nerve impulse propagation, and chemical synthesis. Found in all known ...

. They were the first to manufacture pure ATP. ** 1972 – Sigma's IPO * 1951 – Aldrich founded in

Alfred Bader Alfred Robert Bader (April 28, 1924 – December 23, 2018) was a Canadian chemist, businessman, philanthropist, and collector of fine art. He was considered by the ''Chemical & Engineering News'' poll of 1998 to be one of the "Top 75 Distinguis ...

and Jack Eisendrath and manufactured just 1-methyl-3-nitro-1-nitrosoguanidine. ** 1966 – Aldrich's IPO ** 1972 – Subsidiary Aldrich-Boranes launched to manufacture hydroboration products * 1975 – Merger of Sigma Chemical and Aldrich Chemical to created Sigma-Aldrich. Their first year earned $43 million in sales. * 1999 – Sigma-Aldrich reaches $1 billion in sales * 2005 – Announced membership in

The RNAi Consortium The RNAi Consortium, or TRC, is a public-private partnership whose mission is to create libraries of small hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) for 15'000 human and 15'000 mouse genes. These libraries should help the scientific community to analyse gene functi ...

* 2014 –

Merck KGaA The Merck Group, branded and commonly known as Merck, is a German Multinational corporation, multinational science and technology company headquartered in Darmstadt, with about 60,000 employees and a presence in 66 countries. The group include ...

announced that it would purchase Sigma-Aldrich for approx. $17 billion (€13.1 billion). * November 3, 2014 – Sigma-Aldrich filed a definitive proxy statement with the U.S.

Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...

to hold a special investors meeting regarding approval for the sale to Merck KGaA.

Acquisitions

1970s

*1978 – Makor Chemicals

1980s

* 1984 – Pathfinder * 1986 – Bio Yeda, Bristol Organics * 1989 – Fluka Chemie AG (Swiss company founded in the 1950s) purchased for $39 million.

1990s

* 1993 – Supelco, Inc. acquired to enter the chromatography market * 1994 – LabKemi AB * 1997 – Research Biochemicals International, Riedel-de-Haen, Techcares Systems, Carbolabs, YA Kemia * 1998 – Genosys

2000s

* 2000 – First Medical Inc., Amelung GmbH, ARK Scientific * 2001 – ISOTEC (produces stable isotopes used in basic research and medical diagnostics) * 2004 – Ultrafine (a supplier of contract manufacturing services for drug development), Tetrionics (a producer of high potency and cytotoxic active pharmaceutical ingredients) * 2005 – JRH Biosciences, an industrial supplier of cell culture products for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries; Proligo Group, a global supplier of genomics research tools * 2006 – Beijing Superior Chemicals, Iropharm, Pharmorphix, Advanced Separation Technologies (manufacturer of products for

chiral chromatography Chiral column chromatography is a variant of column chromatography that is employed for the separation of chiral compounds, i.e. enantiomers, in mixtures such as racemates or related compounds. The chiral stationary phase (CSP) is made of a support ...

) * 2007 – Epichem acquired to expand capabilities in materials sciences and semiconductor markets; Molecular Medicine BioServices acquired to provide large-scale viral manufacturing capabilities; announced alliance with Sangamo BioSciences to develop zinc finger-based laboratory research reagents * 2009 – ChemNavigator * 2010 – Cerilliant Corporation, ACE Animals * 2011 – Resource Technology Corp, Vetec Quimica Fina * 2012 – Research Organics Inc., BioReliance (a toxicology and veterinary diagnostics company); BioReliance had previously been acquired by

Invitrogen Invitrogen is one of several brands under the Thermo Fisher Scientific corporation. The product line includes various subbrands of biotechnology products, such as machines and consumables for polymerase chain reaction, reverse transcription, ...

and subsequently sold to

Avista Capital Partners Avista Capital Partners, LLP is an American private equity firm headquartered in New York City focused on growth capital and leveraged buyout investments in middle-market companies in the domestic healthcare sector. History The firm was founded ...

. * 2014 – Cell Marque *2015 – Combined with EMD Millipore to make MilliporeSigma.

Key numbers

Key numbers for Sigma-Aldrich. Revenues: * $2.79 billion (2014) Products: * 100,000 chemical products (46,000 manufactured) * 30,000 laboratory equipment products Customers: * Approximately one million individual customers worldwide * 88,000 accounts Geographies (% of 2008 sales): * United States 35% * Europe 43% * Canada, Asia Pacific, Latin America 22%

Subsidiaries

Aldrich is a supplier in the research and

fine chemicals In chemistry, fine chemicals are complex, single, pure chemical substances, produced in limited quantities in multipurpose plants by multistep batch chemical or biotechnological processes. They are described by exacting specifications, used f ...

market. Aldrich provides

organic Organic may refer to: * Organic, of or relating to an organism, a living entity * Organic, of or relating to an anatomical organ Chemistry * Organic matter, matter that has come from a once-living organism, is capable of decay or is the product ...

and

inorganic chemicals An inorganic compound is typically a chemical compound that lacks carbon–hydrogen bonds⁠that is, a compound that is not an organic compound. The study of inorganic compounds is a subfield of chemistry known as ''inorganic chemistry''. Inorgan ...

, building blocks,

reagents In chemistry, a reagent ( ) or analytical reagent is a substance or compound added to a system to cause a chemical reaction, or test if one occurs. The terms ''reactant'' and ''reagent'' are often used interchangeably, but reactant specifies a ...

, advanced materials and stable

isotopes Isotopes are distinct nuclear species (or ''nuclides'') of the same chemical element. They have the same atomic number (number of protons in their nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemical element), but ...

for

chemical synthesis Chemical synthesis (chemical combination) is the artificial execution of chemical reactions to obtain one or several products. This occurs by physical and chemical manipulations usually involving one or more reactions. In modern laboratory uses ...

, medicinal

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

and

materials science Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials sci ...

. Aldrich's chemicals catalog, the "Aldrich Catalog and Handbook" is often used as a

handbook A handbook is a type of reference work, or other collection of instructions, that is intended to provide ready reference. The term originally applied to a small or portable book containing information useful for its owner, but the ''Oxford Eng ...

due to the inclusion of

structures A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

, physical data, and literature

reference A reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a ''nam ...

s. Sigma is the Sigma-Aldrich's main biochemical supplier, with offerings including

antibiotic An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting pathogenic bacteria, bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the therapy ...

s, buffers,

carbohydrates A carbohydrate () is a biomolecule composed of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O) atoms. The typical hydrogen-to-oxygen atomic ratio is 2:1, analogous to that of water, and is represented by the empirical formula (where ''m'' and ''n'' ma ...

enzyme An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...

s, forensic tools,

hematology Hematology (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, spelled haematology in British English) is the branch of medicine concerned with the study of the cause, prognosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases related to bloo ...

and

histology Histology, also known as microscopic anatomy or microanatomy, is the branch of biology that studies the microscopic anatomy of biological tissue (biology), tissues. Histology is the microscopic counterpart to gross anatomy, which looks at large ...

nucleotide Nucleotides are Organic compound, organic molecules composed of a nitrogenous base, a pentose sugar and a phosphate. They serve as monomeric units of the nucleic acid polymers – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA), both o ...

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residue (biochemistry), residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including Enzyme catalysis, catalysing metab ...

peptide Peptides are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. A polypeptide is a longer, continuous, unbranched peptide chain. Polypeptides that have a molecular mass of 10,000 Da or more are called proteins. Chains of fewer than twenty am ...

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although over 500 amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the 22 α-amino acids incorporated into proteins. Only these 22 a ...

s and their derivatives. Sigma RBI logo

Sigma RBI produces specialized products for use in the field of

cell signaling In biology, cell signaling (cell signalling in British English) is the Biological process, process by which a Cell (biology), cell interacts with itself, other cells, and the environment. Cell signaling is a fundamental property of all Cell (biol ...

and

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...

. Their offerings range from standard biochemical reagents to specialized research tools, including

ligand In coordination chemistry, a ligand is an ion or molecule with a functional group that binds to a central metal atom to form a coordination complex. The bonding with the metal generally involves formal donation of one or more of the ligand's el ...

s for

receptors Receptor may refer to: *Sensory receptor, in physiology, any neurite structure that, on receiving environmental stimuli, produces an informative nerve impulse *Receptor (biochemistry), in biochemistry, a protein molecule that receives and responds ...

and

ion channel Ion channels are pore-forming membrane proteins that allow ions to pass through the channel pore. Their functions include establishing a resting membrane potential, shaping action potentials and other electrical signals by Gating (electrophysiol ...

enzyme inhibitor An enzyme inhibitor is a molecule that binds to an enzyme and blocks its Enzyme activity, activity. Enzymes are proteins that speed up chemical reactions necessary for life, in which Substrate (biochemistry), substrate molecules are converted ...

s, phosphospecific

antibodies An antibody (Ab) or immunoglobulin (Ig) is a large, Y-shaped protein belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily which is used by the immune system to identify and neutralize antigens such as bacteria and viruses, including those that caus ...

, key signal transduction enzymes, and

assay An assay is an investigative (analytic) procedure in laboratory medicine, mining, pharmacology, environmental biology and molecular biology for qualitatively assessing or quantitatively measuring the presence, amount, or functional activity ...

kits for cell signaling. ISOTEC logo

ISOTEC provides isotopically labeled products for

protein structure Protein structure is the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in an amino acid-chain molecule. Proteins are polymers specifically polypeptides formed from sequences of amino acids, which are the monomers of the polymer. A single amino acid ...

determination,

peptide synthesis In organic chemistry, peptide synthesis is the production of peptides, compounds where multiple amino acids are linked via amide bonds, also known as peptide bonds. Peptides are chemically synthesized by the condensation reaction of the carboxyl ...

proteomics Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins. Proteins are vital macromolecules of all living organisms, with many functions such as the formation of structural fibers of muscle tissue, enzymatic digestion of food, or synthesis and replicatio ...

metabolic Metabolism (, from ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run cellular processes; the ...

research,

magnetic resonance imaging Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to generate pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes inside the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and ...

nuclear magnetic resonance Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are disturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near field) and respond by producing an electromagnetic signal with a ...

breath test A breath test is a type of test performed on air generated from the act of exhalation. Types include: *Breathalyzer – by far the most common usage of this term relates to the legal breath test to determine if a person is driving under the inf ...

substrates,

agriculture Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...

, as well as

gas Gas is a state of matter that has neither a fixed volume nor a fixed shape and is a compressible fluid. A ''pure gas'' is made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon) or molecules of either a single type of atom ( elements such as ...

and gas mixes. Riedel-de Haën was incorporated with Sigma-Aldrich in 1999 and manufactures reagents and standards. Supelco is the

chromatography In chemical analysis, chromatography is a laboratory technique for the Separation process, separation of a mixture into its components. The mixture is dissolved in a fluid solvent (gas or liquid) called the ''mobile phase'', which carries it ...

products branch of Sigma-Aldrich. It provides

columns and related tools for

environmental Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

, food and beverage,

pharmaceutical Medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal product, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy ( pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the ...

medical Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

and

chemical A chemical substance is a unique form of matter with constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Chemical substances may take the form of a single element or chemical compounds. If two or more chemical substances can be combin ...

laboratories; sample preparation products and chemical reference standards. SAFC logo

Sigma-Aldrich Fine Chemicals (SAFC) is the fine chemical supply branch of Sigma-Aldrich specializing in raw materials for

cell culture Cell culture or tissue culture is the process by which cell (biology), cells are grown under controlled conditions, generally outside of their natural environment. After cells of interest have been Cell isolation, isolated from living tissue, ...

products; customized services for raw materials, manufacturing of active

ingredients. Sigma Life Science provides products such as custom DNA/RNA Oligonucleotide, oligos; custom DNA and Locked nucleic acid, LNA probes; siRNA; isotopically-labelled peptides and peptide libraries. Sigma Advanced Genetic Engineering (SAGE) Labs is a division within Sigma-Aldrich that specializes in genetic manipulation of in vivo systems for special research and development applications. It was formed in 2008 to investigate zinc finger nuclease technology and its application for disease research models. Located in St. Louis, Missouri, SAGE Labs have developed knockout rats for the study of human diseases and disorders (such as autism), which are sold for up to US$95,000. SAGE also announced its first successful effort in creating a "knockout rabbit". Its facilities include a specific pathogen free, biosecure vivarium as well as research and development labs. Carbolabs produces research quantities of chemicals produced by Phosgenation#Production, phosgenation reactions. The company was acquired in 1998. BioReliance provides testing and manufacturing services to pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies that span the product cycle from early pre-clinical development to licensed production. The company was acquired by Sigma Aldrich in January 2012.

Current leadership

Matthias Heinzel became CEO of the Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in April 2021 following Udit Batra's departure from the company.

References

External links

Official websiteComunidad Oficial Facebook LATAM - Merck Life ScienceComunidad Linkedin LATAM - Merck Life Science
{{Authority control Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Research support companies Chemical companies of the United States Companies based in St. Louis Biotechnology companies of the United States Chemical companies established in 1975 Biotechnology companies established in 1975 2015 mergers and acquisitions Merck Group American subsidiaries of foreign companies