Merck, an American multinational pharmaceutical company, known as MSD outside the US, completed the acquisition of Themis Bioscience, an international biotech company, from Ventech, Wellington Partners, Omnes Capital, aws Grunderfonds Beteiligungs and Hadean Ventures. Financial terms were not disclosed. Merck will initially focus on speeding up the development of Themis Bioscience’s measles vector-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate, which is presently in pre-clinical development. Clinical studies of the coronavirus vaccine candidate are targeted to begin later this year.