Clinpharm Consulting rejigs offering to tackle common PK-PD challenges
The North Carolina firm has set up four consulting services: a Pharmacokinetics (PK) sampling schedule evaluation team; a PK help-desk to advise on strategy; a virtual clinical pharmacology group; and a rapid quote system that estimates cost and scope of a project in 24 hours.
CEO Geoff Banks told Outsourcing-Pharma.com that: “While other PKPD vendors may offer services similar to ClinPharm’s new offerings, no one has packaged these services in an easily accessible format or focused on efficient delivery of these types of services like ClinPharm is doing.
Dr Banks explained the new structure was developed to meet “industry-wide issues and complaints associated with other PKPD vendors” adding that “Clients are always pressed for time and may not have fully considered PKPD issues or know where to find the right advice on these issues.”
Time equals money
Banks also predicted that clients which use this sort of specialised consulting service stand to save money by avoiding unnecessary repetition of PK studies, which is something his firm has observed in the market.
“These savings are compared to the general market for PKPD services as we have had several “rescue” requests from clients to help with programs that were not set up correctly by other vendors and have had problems that delayed the clients’ development timeline.
“It’s difficult to quantify how much time and money a client will save but the cost of evaluation of a PK sampling schedule may be approximately $400 compared to repeating a dose level for $50,000 to $60,000 or redoing a clinical study for hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Healthy demand
Banks also rejected recent analysis suggesting that the recovery of the PK-PD and wider early phase services market has stalled as a result of drug industry reluctance to invest in this type of project.
“Demand for our services is healthy, as is spending on early phase/clinical pharmacology studies and services in general. Clients know that early phase data is key to investor milestones and subsequent success in late stage studies and are willing to invest in R&D now despite the economic conditions.”
