Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (Thermo Fisher) provides life sciences solutions, analytical instruments, specialty diagnostics, and laboratory products and biopharma services.
The company enables customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer by helping them accelerate life sciences research, solve complex analytical challenges, increase laboratory productivity, and improve patient health through diagnostics and the development and manufacture of life-changing therapies. Markets served...
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (Thermo Fisher) provides life sciences solutions, analytical instruments, specialty diagnostics, and laboratory products and biopharma services.
The company enables customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer by helping them accelerate life sciences research, solve complex analytical challenges, increase laboratory productivity, and improve patient health through diagnostics and the development and manufacture of life-changing therapies. Markets served include pharmaceutical and biotech, academic and government, industrial and applied, as well as healthcare and diagnostics.
The company serves customers working in pharmaceutical and biotech companies, hospitals and clinical diagnostic labs, universities, research institutions and government agencies, as well as environmental, industrial, research and development, quality and process control settings. The company’s global team delivers an unrivaled combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and pharmaceutical services through its industry-leading brands, including Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific, Unity Lab Services, Patheon and PPD.
The company continuously increases its depth of capabilities across its broad portfolio of innovative products and services and leverages its extensive global channels to address its customers’ needs.
Business Segments and Products
The company operates through four segments – Life Sciences Solutions, Analytical Instruments, Specialty Diagnostics, and Laboratory Products and Biopharma Services.
Life Sciences Solutions
This segment provides an extensive portfolio of reagents, instruments and consumables used in biological and medical research, discovery and production of new drugs and vaccines, as well as diagnosis of infection and disease. These products and services are used by customers in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agricultural, clinical, healthcare, academic, and government markets. Life Sciences Solutions includes three primary businesses – Biosciences, Genetic Sciences, and BioProduction.
The company’s biosciences business includes reagents, instruments and consumables that help its customers conduct biological and medical research in areas, such as molecular biology and protein biology, discover new drugs and vaccines, and enable the diagnosis of infection and disease. The company’s genetic sciences business combines a wide variety of instruments and related reagents used to provide high-value genomic and proteomic solutions to assist customer decisions in the research, clinical, healthcare and applied markets. The company’s bioproduction business supports developers and manufacturers of biological-based therapeutics and vaccines with a portfolio of premium solutions and services focused on upstream cell culture, downstream purification, analytics for detection and quantitation of process/product impurities, and a suite of single-use solutions spanning the biologics workflow.
Analytical Instruments
This segment provides a broad offering of instruments and the supporting consumables, software and services that are used for a range of applications. These products and services are used by customers in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, government, environmental and other research and industrial markets, as well as the clinical laboratory. This segment includes three primary businesses – Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry, Chemical Analysis, and Electron Microscopy.
The company’s chromatography and mass spectrometry business develops and provides analytical instrumentation for organic and inorganic sample analysis across both applied technologies and scientific research. The company’s chemical analysis products fall into three main categories: production, process and analytics; field and safety instruments; and environmental and process instruments. The company’s electron microscopy business serves customers in the life sciences, materials sciences, and semiconductor markets providing leading research tools; and also, in the semiconductor market provides integrated workflows that power research and development and production solutions.
Specialty Diagnostics
This segment offers a wide range of diagnostic test kits, reagents, culture media, instruments and associated products to serve customers in healthcare, clinical, pharmaceutical, industrial, and food safety laboratories. The company’s healthcare products are used to increase the speed and accuracy of diagnoses, which improves patient care. This segment has five primary businesses – Clinical Diagnostics, ImmunoDiagnostics, Microbiology, Transplant Diagnostics and its Healthcare Market Channel.
The company’s clinical diagnostics products include a broad offering of liquid, ready-to-use and lyophilized immunodiagnostic reagent kits, calibrators, controls, protein detection assays, and instruments. Such products are used for, among other things, drugs-of-abuse testing, therapeutic drug monitoring, thyroid hormone testing, sepsis screening, serum toxicity, first trimester screening, tumor markers testing, and the diagnosis and monitoring of multiple myeloma. The company’s immunodiagnostics offerings include developing, manufacturing and marketing complete blood-test systems to support the clinical diagnosis and monitoring of allergy, asthma and autoimmune diseases. The company’s microbiology offerings include dehydrated and prepared culture media, collection and transport systems, instrumentation and consumables to detect pathogens in blood, diagnostic and rapid direct specimen tests, quality-control products and associated products for the microbiology laboratory. The company’s transplant diagnostics products include human leukocyte antigen typing and testing for the organ transplant market. The company’s healthcare market channel offerings include a broad array of consumables, diagnostic kits and reagents, equipment, instruments, solutions and services for hospitals, clinical laboratories, reference laboratories, physicians’ offices and other clinical testing facilities.
Laboratory Products and Biopharma Services
This segment offers virtually everything needed for the laboratory. The company’s unique combination of self-manufactured and sourced products and extensive service offering enables its customers to focus on their core activities and helps them to be more innovative and productive. The segment also includes a comprehensive offering of outsourced services used by the pharmaceutical and biotech industries for drug development, clinical research, clinical trials services and commercial drug manufacturing. The company serves the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, government and other research and industrial markets, as well as the clinical laboratory market through four key businesses: Laboratory Products, Research and Safety Market Channel, Pharma Services and Clinical Research.
The company’s laboratory products include lab consumables, equipment and chemicals that are used for life science research and drug discovery and development to advance the prevention and cure of diseases and enhance quality of life. The company’s research and safety market channel offers a mix of products that are manufactured by Thermo Fisher, by third parties for it on a private-label basis, and by third parties under their brands but offered for sale through it. The company’s pharma services business provides the entire spectrum of development, manufacturing and clinical trials services for both small-molecule and large-molecule pharmaceuticals. The company’s clinical research business offers comprehensive, integrated clinical development and analytical services, including all phases of development (i.e., Phases I-IV), peri- and post-approval and site and patient access services.
Sales and Marketing
The company markets and sells its products and services through a direct sales force, customer-service professionals, electronic commerce and third-party distributors. The company’s global team delivers a combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and pharmaceutical services through its industry-leading brands, including Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific, Unity Lab Services, Patheon and PPD.
The company has approximately 15,000 sales personnel, including highly trained technical specialists who enable it to better meet the needs of its more technical end-users. The company also provides customers with product standardization and other supply-chain-management services.
Government Regulation
Environmental Regulations
The company is subject to various laws and governmental regulations concerning environmental matters and employee safety and health in the United States and other countries. The U.S. federal environmental legislation that affects the company includes the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA). The company is subject to regulation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) concerning employee safety and health matters. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), OSHA, and other federal agencies have the authority to promulgate regulations that have an effect on the company’s operations.
The company’s Fair Lawn and Somerville, New Jersey facilities entered into administrative consent orders with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in 1984 to maintain groundwater-remediation activities at these sites, and are currently under the State’s Licensed Site Remediation Professional Program. As the owner of the Fair Lawn facility, the company is listed as a potentially responsible party for remediation within an area called the Fair Lawn Wellfields Superfund Site, and, in 2008, the company and certain other parties entered into a consent order with the USEPA to complete a Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study. In 2011, the company’s Life Technologies subsidiary entered into a consent decree with the USEPA and other responsible parties to implement a groundwater remedy at the former Davis Landfill Superfund site in Smithfield, Rhode Island. In November 2021, the 2011 consent decree was amended to reflect the parties’ obligations to implement USEPA’s interim remedy, for which pre-design work commenced during 2022 and is ongoing.
The company’s operations, and some of the products and services it offers, are subject to a number of complex and stringent laws and regulations governing the development, testing, approval, production, handling, transportation and distribution of chemicals, drugs and other similar products, including the operating and security standards of the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and various state boards of pharmacy, as well as comparable state and foreign agencies. As Thermo Fisher’s businesses also include export and import activities, the company is subject to pertinent laws enforced by the U.S. Departments of Commerce, State and Treasury. In addition, the company’s logistics activities must comply with the rules and regulations of the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration and similar foreign agencies.
History
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. was founded in 1956. The company, a Delaware corporation, was incorporated in 1960.