Genmab Brand Guidelines: A 1999 Copenhagen Medarex Spin-off, DuoBody & Merus

Copenhagen, February 1999.

Genmab was founded in February 1999 in Copenhagen as a European spin-off of the American antibody company Medarex, English and Danish Wikipedia say. The seed money came from the Danish investment firm BankInvest, whose biomedical venture fund was then run by Florian Schönharting; both Wikipedias name him as the founder. Lisa N. Drakeman, previously a vice president at Medarex, became chief executive on incorporation and held the post until 2010. The scientist Jan van de Winkel, a co-founder who had served as chief scientific officer and head of research and development, succeeded her as president and chief executive in 2010, according to English Wikipedia.

The early science came from its parent. English Wikipedia says Genmab licensed Medarex’s HuMab-Mouse technology, which uses transgenic mice to produce fully human antibodies, and later developed a technique of its own, UniBody, a smaller antibody format made by removing the hinge region of an IgG4 antibody. The company listed its shares in Copenhagen in October 2000 and held a second offering in January 2006; American depositary shares also trade on Nasdaq in the United States, the same source says.

Although its headquarters are in Copenhagen, much of the laboratory work has been done in the Netherlands. English Wikipedia says the first research site was a nine-storey building in the Utrecht Science Park, replaced by a new R&D Center in Utrecht in June 2018; by mid-2019 that building was full, and plans were drawn up for a connected extension. The company also operates through subsidiaries in Princeton, New Jersey, in Tokyo, in Munich and in Suzhou in China, the same source lists. In 2005 the Biotechnology Industry Organization and the Long Island Life Sciences Initiative gave Genmab a James D. Watson Helix Award, English Wikipedia records.

Antibodies, licensed and partnered.

Much of Genmab’s work reaches patients through larger partners. English Wikipedia lists its first product as Arzerra (ofatumumab), developed with GlaxoSmithKline under a December 2006 agreement and introduced in the United States in 2009 for a form of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. The partnership was renegotiated in mid-2010, after GSK decided to leave oncology. The same antibody later reached the market for relapsing multiple sclerosis as Kesimpta, sold by Novartis, the same source says.

The antibody most often linked with Genmab is daratumumab, which Janssen sells as Darzalex for multiple myeloma. Danish Wikipedia notes that the US Food and Drug Administration granted the antibody Breakthrough Therapy designation while it was still in early clinical development. Christer Granlycke’s October 2025 survey of Danish antibody companies for Forum Nordic lists Darzalex among the approved medicines that generate royalties for Genmab.

Its technology has since moved on from licensed mice. Forum Nordic describes DuoBody as Genmab’s bispecific-antibody platform and HexaBody as a platform designed to increase potency, and says an antibody–drug conjugate platform came with the purchase of ProfoundBio in 2024. Partner medicines that English Wikipedia links to Genmab technology include Rybrevant, Tecvayli and Talvey, all from Janssen, and Tepezza, from Horizon.

Two medicines are Genmab’s own and are marketed with partners, English Wikipedia says: Epkinly (epcoritamab, sold as Tepkinly in Europe), with AbbVie, and Tivdak (tisotumab vedotin), developed with Seagen. Forum Nordic calls epcoritamab the first subcutaneous bispecific antibody approved in the EU for relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

Biotechnology identities.

Biotechnology companies sell things that are almost impossible to photograph. A medicine made from a strand of RNA or an engineered antibody has no shape a camera can see, so the sector leans on a small set of stand-in images: rendered molecules, ribbons and double helices, antibodies drawn as glowing Y-shapes, and close-ups of cells under a microscope. These macro images carry most of the visual weight on corporate websites, investor decks and annual reports.

The second familiar picture is the laboratory itself. Scientists at benches with pipettes, racks of sample tubes and gloved hands over a plate reader appear again and again, because they show work in progress rather than a finished product. Alongside them sit patient-advocacy portraits: people living with a rare disease, their families and the groups that represent them, photographed in everyday settings rather than in the clinic.

Architecture does the rest. Glass-fronted lab campuses in clusters such as Cambridge, Massachusetts, Copenhagen and South San Francisco stand in for scale and ambition, and company websites often show their buildings alongside their people. The calendar adds its own stage: the BIO International Convention and the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, held each January in San Francisco, are where pipelines are presented to partners and investors.

Within that common language, names and colours do much of the work of telling companies apart. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, where it is based, what it makes and what has happened to it — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word. No product, logo or pack is reproduced, and the palettes are our own unofficial interpretation.

A factory sold, a pipeline bought.

Genmab’s path has not been a straight line. In 2008 it bought an antibody manufacturing plant in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, from PDL BioPharma, English Wikipedia says. Financial difficulties followed, and in late 2009 the company decided to sell the site; in November 2009 it announced that about 300 of its roughly 530 jobs would go, Danish Wikipedia reports. The plant was written off by 2012 and sold to Baxter International in February 2013. Since then, English Wikipedia says, Genmab has outsourced both manufacturing and the running of its clinical trials rather than producing antibodies in a plant of its own.

Growth has since come through acquisitions. Genmab announced the purchase of ProfoundBio in April 2024, English Wikipedia says, and in September 2025 announced an agreed bid for Merus N.V., a Dutch company with a late-stage antibody for head and neck cancer. On 12 December 2025 Genmab said it had completed the tender offer, holding about 94.2 percent of Merus shares, with a subsequent offering period running to 29 December and further steps planned to reach full ownership, ChemXplore reported that day. The main asset was petosemtamab, a late-stage candidate with two Breakthrough Therapy designations; Genmab said it aimed to launch it in 2027, subject to trial results and regulatory approval.

On its own website, Genmab sets its large headings in a deep purple.

For a design guide, Genmab shows a biotechnology identity built around antibody platforms, partner medicines and a research base split between two countries. Compare argenx, another European antibody company, and Novo Nordisk, another Danish drug maker. For this guide we use a deep plum, a pale lilac and a warm grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Genmab’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.