The deal makes PPD the primary service provider for all development functions and activities at Elan. Working closely with PPD allows Elan to expand its global development capabilities and accelerate progress of multiple pipeline compounds.
"PPD will act as a strategic collaborator and deliver capabilities, resources and expertise that will enable us to advance our business on a global scale while capturing efficiencies and flexibility", said Doug Love, head of alliance management at Elan.
Services covered by the deal include project and data management, biostatistics, clinical and medical monitoring, quality assurance and pharmacovigilance. Elan plans to build on this initial deal to leverage the companies’ respective capabilities as and when opportunities arise.
Internal capabilities
In January Elan laid-off 130 employees, around half of who worked at its San Francisco R&D site, but emphasised its commitment to in-house talent in the PPD release. PPD is providing a range of services but this is to complement, rather than replace, internal capabilities, says Elan.
“The ability to fluidly access additional expertise and execution capability on a global scale will complement our internal talent and may enable us to move multiple programs forward in a parallel manner”, said Eliseo Salinas, head of development at Elan.
Clinical pipeline products at Elan include treatments for Alzheimer’s and autoimmune diseases. Elan will continue to invest in the “world-leading work in biology” that developed these products, said David Grange, CEO of PPD, while benefiting from the scale offered by its service provider.
Outsourcing deals
The PPD partnership comes two weeks after Elan outsourced antibody technical development, clinical manufacture and related regulatory filing support to Boehringer Ingelheim.
Johannes Roebers, head of biologic strategy, planning and operations at Elan, said: “The agreement enables Elan to focus resources on discovery and the clinical progression of our science while leveraging Boehringer Ingelheim’s process development and production capabilities.”