Serono

Article summary

Serono was a biotechnology company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It was acquired by the German pharmaceutical company Merck in 2006. The company was founded as the Serono Pharmacological Institute by Cesare Serono in 1906 in Rome, Italy. Serono was incorporated in 1987 and the holding company, Ares-Serono S.A., changed its name to Serono S.A. in May 2000, the same year that its CEO, Ernesto Bertarelli, led a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Serono developed and marketed pharmaceuticals in the fields of reproductive health, multiple sclerosis, growth & metabolism and dermatology. A key step in its development was the discovery of a method of extracting urinary gonadotropins by Dr. Piero Donini. A decade after his discovery, a partnership with Professor Bruno Lunenfeld led to gonadotropins being able to become a widely available and commercially successful treatment for infertility, marketed by the company as Pergonal. Serono obtained the biological material for the gonoadtropin extraction from the urine of Italian nuns, thanks to the connections of one of its board members, Giulio Pacelli, who was the nephew of Pope Pius XII. In the 1980s, the company moved from natural extraction into biotechnology, a process begun by its CEO Fabio Bertarelli and accelerated by his son, Ernesto Bertarelli.…

Key claims

1. date of foundation: 1906 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. The record states that the date of foundation is "1906". What evidence would count against this claim?
3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1372023932