CROs in disguise

Brian Orelli at The Motley Fool writes on the basics of CROs, or CROs 101 for the non-industry professional. Orelli outlines a few characteristics of CROs but what was most interesting was his claim that some CROs can be disguised and, according to Orelli, it seems (to me) that pharmaceutical companies are essentially turning into holding companies that license or purchase drug candidates, escort them through the regulatory maze, and produce and hock them once they get past the FDA. Which he claims isn't a bad business model. Check out his piece here and let us know your thoughts.

Omnicore's CRO sees 2008 profit

At the CRO, Omnicore Clinical Research, operated by Omnicore, they reported an adjusted profit of $17.6 million profit from the 2008 year, up from $13.1 million in 2007. Before the profit was adjusted, they saw business totaling $49.1 million. For more, read this article.

Tigermed, MacroStat forge Chinese CRO alliance

According to PharmaTimes.com, the two CROs will pursue “extensive strategic partnership” in clinical trial management, data management and statistical analysis. The alliance will broaden the scope of MacroStat’s operations and “add professionalism to Tigermed’s biostatistics services”, the latter said. With the new alliance, will more work be outsourced to China? We'd like to hear your thoughts.

Tough Economy Slows Down CRO Growth for now

According to this article in Clinical Trials Today recent layoffs in the pharmaceutical industry has slowed down CRO growth in short term, but in the long run improving efficiency and controlling costs will result in more opportunities for CROs.

Oncology is expected to become a huge focus in the future, so CROs with strong oncology franchises should reap the benefits from that trend soon. It is said that the oncology market will grow to approximately $80 billion in global sales by 2012. European CROs are also making headway as the two Italy-based CROs, Phidea and Marvin Research have completed their merger.

What are some other trends that can help boost CRO growth in the near future?

What's your opinion?

In the most recent issue of the Partnerships with CROs LinkedIn Roundup, we asked several questions of our attendees about Sponsor-Site relationships. Now is your chance to weigh in! If you haven't had a chance to joined our LinkedIn group, join today! We'll reveal the results in our March LinkedIn Round Up newsletter.

Are you seeking new ways to improve your relationship with your sites?

Is finding a quality investigator proving to be increasingly difficult?

Win Through a Social Contract: Use Teamwork to Create Value, Develop New Strategy, Iterate Quickly, and Implement

Nilofer Merchan's great post on MarketingProfs.com, outlines the process to achieve a high level of teamwork, an organization must hold a set of core beliefs that are central to how strategy is created and carried out. These core beliefs are the common thread that weaves together the framework and rules of engagement that enable people to collaborate in such a way that they can create powerful strategies together. Valuable information for CROs and management, indeed. What other strategies to you have for successfully implementing a process?

Revisiting Ethics of Global Outsourcing

On his blog, Global Bioethics, Stuart Rennie discusses a topic that we covered last week concerning unethical outsourcing practices. Rennie's take includes, "It is a charming idea that ethics committees would be responsible for stimulating the globalization of research (and indirectly, the ethical problems that go with it), but it seems more likely that streamlining the processes at home will simply increase the number of trials abroad, as long as the economic disparities between countries remain in place. You will simply get your IRB approval faster. Besides, if you want to 'de-incentivize' clinical trials abroad, why not build up ethical review in developing countries, or force pharmaceutical companies to pay to build local health infrastructure and capacity as a cost of doing business, rather than scaling down IRB processes at home?" We encourage you to post your comments here or on Mr. Rennie's blog.