The office, in the Southern city Lund, is intended to be a regional base of operations for the contract research organisation’s (CRO) research associates and start‐up teams for Phase II to IV clinical trials and will work in concert with its units in Denmark, Finland and Norway.
Lund is located in Oresund, a hub for life science businesses situated in Sweden’s Medicon Valley, which is widely acknowledged as one of Europe's primary centers for biotech and pharmaceutical activity. The area is also home to several top universities.
PRA, which has operated in Sweden since 2005, said that investment in the new office is a reflection of growing pharmaceutical industry demand for clinical research in the country.
And, while this is the usual justification given anytime a CRO opens a new office anywhere, in this instance the claim fits with market analysis.
According to a recent report by Invest Sweden, in the past five years Sweden has participated in 11 per cent of all trials initiated in the European Union, which a far higher share than its population would indicate given that the country is home to roughly 2 per cent of the continent’s population.
Sweden is also the world’s twelfth largest producer of clinical research results and second biggest per capita producer of medical research publications, according to analysis conducted in 2009 by the Academy of Finland and Swedish Research Council.
In a press statement Ludger Langer, PRA's Vice President of Clinical Operations in Europe, Asia-Pacific and Africa said: "Providing our local teams with a centralized location for operations strengthens our client offerings in this region."
The Lund site is one of a string of openings PRA has undertaken in Europe in recent months, which began in December with facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic and continued more recently with an office in Ukraine in February.