Management and staff establish own service company

Management buy-out of natural substance research at Bayer HealthCare

New business to be located in the Dortmund BioMedizin Center in mid-2006

Tuesday - April 11, 2006, Leverkusen / Germany – The management and staff of Bayer HealthCare’s natural substance research unit have set up an independent service company InterMed Discovery GmbH (www.Intermed-discovery.com). Acting as a contract manufacturer for the pharmaceutical, crop protection and food industries the company will search for active ingredients, develop them into products and generate its own trademarks. The decision follows the restructuring of Bayer HealthCare’s pharmaceutical research and the associated spin-off of anti-infectives research, which had previously been the most important internal customer for the natural substance research unit.

InterMed Discovery will comprise 15 experienced and renowned employees in the field of natural substance research. The company plans to move from Bayer HealthCare´s (BHC) Pharmacenter in Wuppertal to the Dortmund BioMedizin Center (BMZ) in mid-2006. Dr. Thomas Henkel, former Head of the BHC natural substance department and now Managing Director of InterMed Discovery, comments: “The employees all worked together to establish the new company – indeed, the management has even made a financial investment in the project itself. This commitment will help us further expand our new customer business in the future. By relocating to Dortmund, we seek to harness and leverage the excellent infrastructure and expertise of the university, Max Planck Institute and BMZ, thereby further strengthening North Rhine-Westphalia’s status as a scientific location.”

InterMed Discovery will seek to become the world’s leading provider of discovery services and products based on natural substances. The company’s own technology platform and unique pool of resources will make a substantial contribution towards achieving this objective. “With our modern and efficient processes, unique substance library and database as well as 20 years of experience in drug discovery in a large pharmaceutical company, we will be extremely well positioned in this field of research right from the start,” adds Thomas Henkel. “We will serve as a competent partner for international companies from the pharmaceutical, crop protection and food industries while remaining open to strategic partnerships.”

Bayer Healthcare
Bayer HealthCare, a subsidiary of Bayer AG, is one of the world’s leading, innovative companies in the healthcare and medical products industry and is based in Leverkusen, Germany. Bayer HealthCare generated sales amounting to some 9.4 billion euros and employed 33.800 people worldwide in 2005.

The company combines the global activities of the Animal Health, Consumer Care, Diabetes Care, Diagnostics and Pharmaceuticals divisions. The new Pharmaceuticals division was established on January 1, 2006, and comprises the former Biological Products and Pharmaceutical divisions. Pharmaceuticals now has three business units: Hematology/Cardiology, Oncology and Primary Care.

Bayer HealthCare’s aim is to discover and manufacture products that will improve human and animal health worldwide. The products enhance well-being and quality of life by diagnosing, preventing and treating diseases.


Forward-looking statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer Group management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in our public reports filed with the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (including our Form 20-F). The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.

Contact Information

Christina Sehnert

Bayer Healthcare

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