Contract research news in brief
pharmafile | May 4, 2011 | News story | Research and Development | contract research, cros, research and development
This week’s CRO news roundup includes Omnicare CR and LAB Research changing hands, Q1 financials for ICON and PPD and a biomarker deal for India’s GVK Biosciences.
Contract research organisation Omnicare Clinical Research is the latest to fall into the hands of a private equity firm, having been bought by Nautic Partners for an undisclosed amount. Omnicare CR specialises in early, mid- and late-phase drug, medical device and biologic trials, as well as technical services and pharmaceutical packaging design, and operates in 32 countries worldwide. Parent company Omnicare Inc, which provides healthcare services to the elderly, said the CRO unit was no longer a good fit with its “portfolio of assets”, and would do better independently. Omnicare CR posted a pre-tax operating loss of $2.5 million in the first quarter of 2011, halving its losses on the 2010 period despite a 14% decline in sales.
CIT Safety & Health Research Laboratories, a preclinical CRO owned by France’s Applied Biology Company, says it has purchased “substantially all” of the assets of LAB Research, consisting of three facilities in Canada, Denmark and Hungary. The newly created CIT-LAB group will be “one of the top five preclinical CROs”, according to CIT, with annual sales of around $103 million and 830 employees. The three LAB Research facilities provide “general services” in non-clinical safety assessment and each has its own specialisation, such as large animals in Canada, minipigs in Denmark or inhalation and ecotoxicology in Hungary, said the French CRO. CIT’s own expertise is in large animals, carcinogenicity, genetic toxicology, reprotoxicology and genomics/biomarkers.
Indian CRO GVK Biosciences has extended a licensing agreement with the FDA for its GOBIOM clinical biomarker database. The licence gives the access to the GIOBIOM database, which the agency’s scientists helped develop. GOBIOM includes information on 12,000 biomarkers associated with various therapeutic areas and identified in clinical or preclinical trials. US regulator the FDA will use the information to help develop and update its recently-published draft guidance on biomarker qualification.
Irish outsourcing specialist ICON says its first-quarter 2011 revenue rose 5% to $229 million, although operating profit fell to $16 million from $27 million a year earlier. The reduction was in part the result of a $5 million charge related to ICON’s ongoing restructuring programme, which has seen a facility in Scotland close down as well as workforce reductions. Booking levels are “strong”, according to the CRO, which says it is on track for a return to growth in the second half of the year. The development services specialist has also forged an alliance with ACRONET Corp of Japan to boost its presence in the Japanese CRO market.
PPD has posted a near-90% rise in operating profit to $52 million in the first quarter of 2011, thanks to higher revenues, particularly for its clinical development services division, as well as reduced administrative costs and the sale of its compound-partnering business to Furiex Pharmaceuticals in June 2010. Revenues at the USA-based CRO rose 10.5% to $383 million. A 72% gain in operating profit for the clinical development services business was offset by a 37% decline for PPD’s laboratory services unit, resulting from project cancellations and investment in new drug discovery services.
Phil Taylor
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