Organon was founded in 1923 as a partnership between Professor Ernst Laqueur, a physiologist/endocrinologist of the University of Amsterdam, and Saal van Zwanenberg who owned a
slaughterhouse, Zwanenbergs Slachterije en Fabrieken, in
Oss in Northern Brabant. The company's first product was
insulin in 1923. In the 1930s it manufactured
estrogens, in particular estrone under the trade name Menformon. Organon was initially located in
West Orange, New Jersey. In November 2007,
Schering-Plough acquired Organon BioSciences and the veterinary pharmaceutical company
Intervet from
Akzo Nobel. Schering-Plough transferred Organon to its headquarters in
Jersey City, New Jersey. Two years later, Schering-Plough merged with
Merck & Co., known as Merck Sharp & Dohme or MSD outside the United States and Canada. In May 2020, Merck & Co. announced that Organon & Co. would be the name of "the pending spin-off of its women’s health, legacy products, and biosimilars businesses, which the company says is on track to be completed by the end of the first half in 2021." Merck completed the spinoff and Organon & Co. became a publicly traded company on June 3, 2021. A copy of the Information Statement sent to Merck shareholders was filed with the U.S. SEC on April 20, 2021, in a Form 10-12B/A, Exhibit 99.1 In November 2021, the business announced it would acquire Forendo Pharma and its lead compound, a potentially first-in-class oral
17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 inhibitor. In April 2026, India based
Sun Pharma acquired Organon & Co. at $12 billion. ==Products==