1954: Jack Bush purchases the rights to a new membrane-production process developed by Lovell Chemical Company.As of the late 2000s, Millipore was the only company providing both upstream cell culture and downstream separations offerings for biopharmaceutical production. Millipore's 2006 acquisition of Serologicals Corporation provided entry to high-growth markets for drug discovery products and services, antibodies, cell biology reagents, and stem cell research. The company opened manufacturing plants in Jaffrey, New Hampshire Molsheim, France Cork, Ireland and other locations. Modern filters are polyvinylidene fluoride and/or polypropylene based.īy 1970, Millipore had established subsidiaries in seven countries. Filters consisted of nitrocellulose or polycarbonate membrane nucleopore filters ranging from pore size of 0.2 μm ( micrometer) to 20 µm. In 2010, Merck KGaA the world's oldest chemical and pharmaceutical company, acquired Millipore Corporation to form EMD Millipore.īy 1959, Millipore made porous membrane filters of cellulose esters or other materials which resembled paper in sheet form, and were brittle when dry but friable when wet. Later the company changed its name to Millipore Corporation to reflect its growing range of products. The term " millipore", originally a trademark, has since come into generic use, referring to any of several filters, made from cellulose acetate membranes, capable of removing very small particles. Bush coined the word millipore to refer to the numerous tiny openings in the microporous membrane product. When the membranes were declassified in 1953 and offered for commercial use, Jack Bush, son of Vannevar Bush and a Lovell employee, bought the company's technology for $200,000 and established the Millipore Filter Company. Army Chemical Engineers to develop and manufacture membrane filtering devices used to separate the molecular components of fluid samples. In the early 1950s, Lovell Corporation won a contract from the U.S. In the United States and Canada, the life science business is now known as MilliporeSigma. In 2015, Merck acquired Sigma-Aldrich and merged it with Merck Millipore. The Millipore Corporation was founded in 1954, and listed among the S&P 500 since the early 1990s, as an international biosciences company which makes micrometer pore-size filters and tests. Merck is a supplier to the life science industry.
It was formed when Merck acquired the Millipore Corporation in 2010. Merck Millipore was the brand used by Merck Group's (not US-based Merck & Co.) global life science business until 2015 when the company re-branded.