Solvo will retain its brand and the team of around 100 will be maintained and reinforced in the future, said Dr. Jean-Francois Le Bigot, president and CEO of Citoxlab Group, who also confirmed plans to move Solvo’s laboratories into new facilities near the University of Budapest in order to increase laboratory space.
The acquisition, terms of which we not disclosed, is expected to close within the next month, and is the third made by Citoxlab in the last 18 months.
“The acquisition of Solvo follows the acquisition of AcceLAB in 2016 and the one of Xenometrics announced in November 2017, which already boosted Citoxlab revenues growth which was 21.5% last year,” said Le Bigot.
Following the acquisition, Citoxlab will able to offer its customers a range of services for in vivo and in vitro assessment of pharmacokinetics and metabolism of new drug candidates, including the prediction of potential drug-drug interactions.
“The knowledge of new drug candidates’ transport is key today to predict pharmacokinetics and also to predict potential drug-drug interactions,” said Le Bigot. “With the in vitro models of transport that Solvo has developed and validated, this knowledge can be gained at an early stage in the drug development process.”
Solovo’s in vitro models are complementary to the in vivo investigations of pharmacokinetics and metabolism provided by Citoxlab research centers in France, the US, and Canada, she added.
Le Bigot explained that drug-drug interactions have become a significant public health problem. “The origin of these DDI are mainly related to interferences occurring in drug transport and/or interferences (inhibition or induction) in drug metabolism,” he said.