Release issued 26th November 2008

tesa AG, based in Hamburg, has acquired Labtec Gesellschaft für technologische Forschung und Entwicklung mbH. In the future, the company, which is based in the town of Langenfeld in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, will do business as a wholly owned subsidiary of tesa AG.

Worldwide, the tesa Group earns more than three-quarters of its sales volume of 846 million euros with industrial customers. The Group’s core markets include self-adhesive system solutions for the automotive, electronics, and print and paper industries. Aside from further developing these markets in growth regions, another important element of tesa’s strategy is to establish additional, technologically advanced lines of business, including in the medical sector. “Labtec expands tesa’s capabilities in the field of self-adhesive system solutions for the health care sector”, explains Dr. Robert Gereke, member of the tesa Executive Board responsible for the Industry division. “With this acquisition, tesa is taking a logical next step in pursuing its successful strategy of tapping into high-yield markets of the future within the industrial sector.”

Focus on transdermal therapeutic systems
Labtec currently performs research and development work and handles development projects under contract with a number of companies in the pharmaceutical industry. The company has come to specialize in fields that include patches capable of delivering medications, termed transdermal therapeutic systems (TTS). A TTS delivers an active ingredient through the skin, where it penetrates to the underlying tissue and the blood vessels, ensuring that it can take effect systemically over a longer period. The benefits the patient derives from this form of drug delivery, as opposed to conventional oral or parenteral use of medications involving pills or injections, lie in its extremely convenient handling and in the fact that it consistently and evenly releases the active ingredient throughout the body and can be tailored precisely to the patient’s individual needs. Transdermal therapeutic systems have been in use for about two decades, but it was not until recent years that new technologies began making an increasing number of active pharmaceutical ingredients available for this specific form of administration. In line with this trend, experts estimate that the overall TTS market is growing by more than 10 percent annually.

The competencies of tesa and Labtec are an optimum fit for each other, especially in the area of the development of innovative coated therapy systems, which combine polymer chemistry and medical expertise. For these kinds of products, tesa provides innovative technologies for producing self-adhesive coatings and applying them to appropriate backing materials, meeting stringent requirements for purity and precision as it does so.
Positioning in the in-vitro diagnostics segment
In recent years, tesa has already been able to successfully position itself as a supplier to the in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) industry worldwide. Working on the basis of cooperation agreements with the industry leaders, which produce everything from conventional test strips such as those used by diabetic patients to special biosensors, tesa has developed special new self-adhesive coatings, functional coatings, and die-cuts that optimize the process of manufacturing the multilayer test strips, make handling these types of materials easier for patients, and enable more precise measurement results. The requirements for adhesive tapes in the IVD segment are especially demanding: The materials and other ingredients used must not interact with blood or adversely affect the enzymatic detection reaction.

Pursuing a successful model
“Under the umbrella of tesa AG, we have the opportunity to add important competencies to our successful business model, thereby further developing it. And with our integration into an international group of companies that has more than 125 years of expertise in the area of research and development, a great deal of experience in coating technology, and a global infrastructure, Labtec will also be able to grow even more strongly in the future”, says Dr. Günter Cordes, former Managing Director and CEO of Schwarz Pharma, who founded the life science company in 1990. Labtec is optimally geared toward the future: Just a year ago, the company opened its new office building and a research center that meets the European and international GMP (good manufacturing practice) requirements. The Labtec team currently includes 30 highly trained employees, most of them with backgrounds in natural science.

(4th August 2008) Ondansetron RapidFilm™ licensed to BioAlliance Pharma for Europe

(29th January 2008) APR Applied Pharma Research s.a. ("APR") and Labtec GmbH ("Labtec") Announce the Successful Completion of the Pilot Bioequivalence Study of Their Donepezil RapidFilm

(15th January 2008) Successful completion of Pivotal Bioequivalence study for Ondansetron RapidFilm

(25th April 2007) Labtec's next generation pain patch successful in clinical studies

(5th January 2007) First continuous combined hormone replacement patch approved for marketing in Europe