This month’s news about industry hires, promotions, acquisitions and other events includes Signant, PRA, Lonza, Bora Pharmaceuticals and other top firms.
This month’s news about industry hires, promotions, acquisitions and other events includes Signant, PRA, Lonza, Bora Pharmaceuticals and other top firms.
Signant Health has purchased VirTrial, a company offering software programs for remote site startup and decentralized trial operation. With the acquisition, Signant Health reportedly expects to enhance the digital performance of trial sites and enable sponsors to more effectively collect data.
Roger Smith, CEO of Signant Health, said, “COVID-19 has created a widespread and urgent need for contingency planning in clinical trial operations and has forever changed how our industry plans and executes trials. Signant and VirTrial are passionate about supporting the trial ecosystem with software, analytics, and logistics solutions to conduct studies and generate data across all modalities while improving, respecting, and honoring the role investigators and coordinators play in collaborating with patients to advance clinical research.”
Contract research organization (CRO) PRA Health Sciences has appointed Isaac Rodriguez-Chaves as senior vice president of scientific and clinical affairs. He most recently served as senior officer for clinical research methodologies, regulatory compliance and medical policy development with the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
In his new position, Rodriquez-Chavez (who has more than 32 years of experience in standard, preclinical and clinical research) will lead the company’s Global Center of Excellence for Decentralized Trial Strategy. His responsibilities will include overseeing the growth and development of PRA’s DCT strategy, regulatory framework creation, and clinical trial modernization.
Bora Pharmaceuticals has completed acquisition of GSK’s Mississauga, Ontario (Canada) facility. The purchased site will become Bora’s first North American manufacturing facility and the new home to its North American headquarters.
According to the company, the purchase of the site will enable Bora to produce approximately 50 different products to 100 markets around the world. The terms of the transaction include a minimum five-year supply agreement with GSK.
Mobile nursing specialist Illingworth research group has named Chris Wells director of patient concierge services. His responsibilities will include help powering the launch of the company’s new mobile app enabled PatientGO patient concierge solution.
"Patient-centricity means delivering a 360-degree experience to the patient, and that's exactly what PatientGO provides,” he said. “PatientGO will integrate with and complement our service offering; our goal is to enable an even more positive, rewarding, and compassionate trial experience to patients and their families.”
Lonza has announced plans to invest in expansion of its particle engineering and drug product capabilities at its site in Bend, Oregon, in order to meet increased market demand. The project—which will include new suites for the development and clinical manufacture of drug product intermediates and drug products utilizing spray-drying, hot-melt extrusion and melt-spray-congeal processing—is expected to be completed by May 2022.
Paul Granberry, managing director for Lonza Bend, said, “We continue to see increased demand for development, clinical and commercial manufacture of particle-engineered intermediates and finished drug products. Dedicated, fit-for-purpose suites, infrastructure and systems are critical for supporting the needs of our customers’ early-phase programs.”
Intelligent Clinical, the new clinical trials facility launched by Glasgow-based Intelligent Tissue Group, has hired Ellie Robertson to serve as managing director. The newly launched division anticipates taking on trials ranging from 40 to 5,000 patients around the world.
Robertson said, “Our experienced clinical team is well-qualified to provide their expertise on a significant number and range of project enquiries and is ready to assist with every step of the clinical trial process. Setting up Intelligent Clinical and readying it to launch as the latest business in a fast-growing group has been an exceptionally exciting time.”
Nanoform, a Finland-based nanoparticle medicine technology company, will make its US television debut on Advancements, a program on the business news network CNBC. Hosted by actor Ted Danson, the show discusses how cutting-edge developments in a wide range of fields impact the world.
The Nanoform segment is slated to appear during an episode airing Saturday, December 12 at 2:30 pm EST. Viewers that tune in will hear from company representatives how Nanoform’s CESS nanoparticle engineering technology has the potential to double the number of drug candidates that progress to clinical trials.
William Carson, chairman at Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development and Commercialization (OPDC), has been pointed to the board of directors of Saama Technologies. He holds more than two decades of pharma, healthcare and business experience to the position, most recently as OPDC president and CEO.
“As we continue to evolve Saama into the leading technology vendor of choice for accelerating drug development, Bill’s contributions will elevate the authoritative thinking for which Saama’s Board of Directors is known,” said Suresh Katta, Saama founder and CEO. “As a nationally recognized life sciences industry visionary, Bill will provide valuable perspectives as we continue to execute our strategy, drive profitability, enhance customer value, and help the industry expedite drug development and delivery.”
Life-sciences analytics specialist Cytel has purchased Purple Squirrel Economics. The acquisition is designed to bolster Cytel’s health economics outcomes research (HEOR) expertise.
Joshua Schultz, Cytel CEO, said, “Purple Squirrel Economics is a highly specialized HEOR team, and we are excited to welcome them into Cytel. By combining the power, knowledge, and expertise of Cytel, Ingress, and MTEK Sciences, we look forward to further increasing the reach of our innovative real world and advanced analytics services to help companies derive clinical insights as well as demonstrate and communicate value, ultimately aiding the global effort to bring medicines to patients more quickly.”
Envision Pharma Group has acquired Two Labs, a company that provides a range of integrated commercial solutions to pharma and biotech firms. The move is designed to bring together complementary clients, services and technologies, and extend Envision’s capabilities in the product pre-launch arena.
Envision CEO David Thompson said, “This exciting combination of Envision and Two Labs creates a compelling and unrivaled proposition in launch excellence partnership globally and in the US. We look forward to sharing our joint expertise and leveraging our complementary services across medical affairs and product launch planning to support our clients in their goal of bringing new medicines to market effectively and compliantly, to improve patient outcomes.”
BioIVT, a company specializing in research models and services for drug development, has pledged to make several donations to charity to honor clients’ commitment to medical research. The healthcare organizations slated to receive the donations include the Cancer Research Institute, Global Liver Institute, Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, and PATH.
BioIVT CEO Jeffrey Gatz said, “Our clients dedicate tremendous brain power, time, and resources to advance medical research and make a positive impact on human health. In honor of their hard work and important missions, BioIVT is making a financial contribution to these featured organizations that, like our clients, are relentlessly driving research forward.”