Under the non-exclusive agreement, SafeChemicals will promote the Canadian CRO's preclinical laboratory services in Korea and, under a separate exclusive deal, will market its chemical and agrochemical offering.
Mainville told Outsourcing-Pharm that: “The Korean market is very active in the development of large molecules and local CRO's do not offer the range of capabilities that the larger CRO's like LAB can offer abroad.”
“[LRI] has successfully conducted many IND programs for Korean clients over the past years and we wanted to increase our presence to better serve the local clients following the recent expansion of each of our labs.”
Mainville said that using an agent with “a deep understanding of the local market” will help attract additional business and avoid any temporal and communication difficulties that arise. He added that an agency deal is “a more flexible prelude to a permanent commercial infrastructure.”
“SafeChemical employs several senior staff members that have accumulated many years of experience with the toxicology part of R&D and will certainly accelerate the branding of LRI in Korea.”
Until recently SafeChemicals acted as Korean agent for SafePharm. However, this ended following the latter’s acquisition by Harlan Laboratories, which presented LRI with what Mainville said was “a great opportunity for LRI to partner with [SafeChemicals].”
Mainville also explained that Eastern Trading, which has promoted LRI’s services in Korea for many years, will continue to do so in parallel with SafeChemical under “an agreement with both companies with respect to their respective market coverage.”