Shasun Chemicals & Drugs Ltd has signed up a non-exclusive licensing contract with Merck & Co Inc.

The deal will let Merck to use Shasun’s proprietary technology to make active pharmaceutical ingredients.

The Buchwald cross-coupling technology is one of the popular technologies in the pharmaceutical region granting increasingly complex new drugs to be fabricated in a professional and inexpensive way.

Merck may use the technology called the Buchwald technology to develop three to four bulk drugs, he added.

Michel Spagnol, chief technology officer of Shasun said, “This is an important milestone for Shasun in making this technology widely accessible and paving the way for further collaborations.”

Last year, Shasun licensed the technology to Danish firm, H Lundbeck A/S.

In noon trading (1:19 pm), Shasun Chemicals shares were trading up 5.66% at Rs 59.70 on BSE.