The world’s largest contract research organisation (CRO) Quintiles has had a busy few weeks:
Last week it announced it has fully acquired Clio Science, a full-service CRO with a staff of 70 based in Tokyo and Osaka. Also this month, Quintiles opened a new bioanalytical lab in the Netherlands and, on the financial side, secured almost $2bn (€1.8bn) following the completion of a refinancing programme.
“While none of these events has a major impact on our model, we have updated our estimates to reflect the flurry of activity,” William Blair analyst John Kreger said in a note.
“We maintain our Outperform rating on Quintiles given strong bookings and a more attractive valuation of late, and continue to view Quintiles as the most diversified way to invest in late-stage pharma outsourcing.”
Asia-Pacific market access
In its latest announcement, Quintiles is launching a new service for emerging biopharma companies in the Asia-Pacific region, based on its estimation that there are over 1,400 such firms across the region looking for help accessing the regional and global markets.
“We work with all sized companies but smaller emerging biopharma companies have a number of regulatory and access challenges and needs that need to be addressed,” Quintiles spokesman Jay Johnson told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.
“Other CROs do offer these services but what we did was take a look at the services that we had across our network in 13 Asia-Pacific countries and decided this new solution set would work best.”
The service includes dedicated local project leadership in the region, offering knowledge of local markets, customs and language, and accelerated patient recruitment due to the firm’s global and Asia-Pacific network.