Water Street Healthcare Partners and JLL Partners have acquired Orange County, CA-headquartered Thread, a virtual research platform for the capture of global clinical trial data.
Following the acquisition – financial terms of which were not disclosed – John Reites, partner and chief product officer, Thread, said the company will be well-funded to continue expanding its platform and service capabilities.
“Together, our goal is to further build Thread’s innovative offering as we expand globally,” Reites told us. “Water Street and JLL Partners are aligned with this mission, have deep life sciences expertise and an extensive network of resources that stood out to us as the best partners to help us build on our strong foundation and achieve our goals for growth.”
Headquartered in New York, JLL Partners is a middle-market private equity firm. Water Street is a strategic investor focused exclusively on health care. The Chicago, IL-based company has worked with companies including Humana, Johnson & Johnson, and Medtronic, among others.
“Our whole approach is to look for companies like Thread, which offer very unique capabilities or solutions, and contribute our expertise and network of resources, in addition to capital, to help grow that company and make it a market leader,” Kelly Zitlow, vice president of communications at Water Street, told us.
Thread’s leadership team will continue to run day-to-day operations, reporting to Water Street executive advisor Mark Goldberg, MD, who has been appointed executive chairman of Thread.
Goldberg also is the executive chairman of Cato Research, which the company invested in last year in conjunction with JLL. Said Goldberg in a statement, “there are many opportunities for Thread and Cato to collaborate in developing emerging approaches to clinical development.”
“As our industry continues to focus on modernizing clinical research,” added Reites, “Thread has been enabling our customers to support patients, sites and study teams to conduct studies that are more decentralized, easier to participate in and less costly.”
These studies include a mix of features – which Reites said are becoming standard, such as eConsent, ePRO/eCOA, wearables, and virtual study visits.
“We continue to see our customers increase their use of these hybrid on-site and at-home study designs to decentralize some or most of their protocol visits,” he added.
