Precos, a spin-out from the University of Nottingham, said the expansion is designed to cater for additional business generated by an increase in its drug industry client base, which has “more than doubled” in the first six months of the year.
Jon Waterman-Smith, business development manager at Precos, told Outsourcing-pharma.com that: “We currently have a capacity of 2000 experimental immuno-deficient rats or mice and 500 experimental conventional/transgenic mice," adding that the planned laboratory expansion will "support the continued planned growth in study numbers."
The oncology-focused preclinical contract research organisation (CRO) has also hired Aaron Cranston, former head of drug discovery and translational medicine at Kudos Pharmaceuticals, as leader of its in vivo study services group.
Precos chairman Neil Rotherham, said: “We are taking significant steps in our growth strategy by providing services for an ever-expanding number of clients. Aaron’s appointment will strengthen our senior team in support of our growing client base and we aim to continue expanding into 2012 and beyond.”
Non-conventional partnership
In other news, Precos recently signed a partnership agreement with Swiss non-profit group Reliable Cancer Therapies (RCT), which is an organisation that funds the development of promising ‘non-conventional’ cancer therapies and provides research-based data to other developers.
Under the partnership agreement, which was signed in August, Precos will assess the efficacy of various cancer drugs to support RCT’s wider assessment programme.
Speaking at the time RCT founder Luc Verelst said: “There is a need for reliable data for non-conventional cancer treatments“ explaining that “the majority of research conducted to date is not sufficiently scientifically or statistically rigours to prove the benefits of these therapies.”