Business and People Update November 2008

People

Ravi Pawa

Bringing with her over 15 years of clinical and research experience, Ravi Pawa, MB ChB, is Synexus' (Lancashire, UK) new medical advisor. Pawa previously served as the company's clinical director of the Lancashire Research Center.

David Tousley

Madeira Therapeutics (Leadwood, KS) has added David Tousley, MBA, CPA, the current principal of Stratium Consulting Services, to the Madeira Board of Advisors.

Tara Webb

Tara Webb is ACORN's (Memphis, TN) new senior director of business development, after serving in the same position for i3 Statprobe (Basking Ridge, NJ).

Evette Riegel

Evette Riegel, RN, will serve as Beardsworth's (Flemington, NJ) project director in clinical operations as of her recent promotion. In this position she will work to expand the company's oncology niche specialty.

Sven Degroeve will serve as MDCPartners' (Brussels, Belgium) new knowledge systems architect, where he will work to strengthen the company's technology and consultancy divisions.

Yong-Xi Li joins the Medpace (Cincinnati, OH) team as the new executive director and brings with him a strong background in bioanalytical technology, method development, validation, and sample analysis in pharmaceutical development.

John Nestor, a medicinal chemist experienced in drug discovery at large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, joins Transition Therapeutics (Toronto, Canada) as its new vice president of drug discovery.

Actavis (Hafnarfjordur, Iceland) has made a series of senior appointments including, Gudbjorg Edda Eggersdottir to deputy chief executive officer, Vlaur Ragnarsson to executive vice president of third-party sales, and Doug Boothe to chief executive officer of Actavis, United States.

Upon Michael Griffith's resignation from Aptuit (Greenwich, CT), Timothy Tyson has been appointed as the new executive chairman and acting chief executive officer.

Colleen Pero has been hired as TB Alliance's (New York, NY) new chief administrative officer, where she will be responsible for leading the expansion of the company's staff and internal operations as it advances its drug pipeline.

With over 25 years of pharmaceutical and CRO experience, Deena Wegner will become Drug Safety Alliance's (Research Triangle Park, NC) new vice president of business development and strategy.

Premier Research (Philadelphia, PA) has appointed Fabio Trave, MD, to executive director of medical affairs and strategic product development.

Sam Dranoff, the recent managing director of commercial operations for Biomedical System's (St. Louis, MO), has been promoted to vice president of business development, imaging services.

Guy Dewil, MD, has been appointed ICON's (Dublin, Ireland) new chief operating officer, where he will manage the company's global operations.

ProFibrix (Leiden, The Netherlands) has brought Jan Ohrstrom on board as the company's new chief operating officer, after serving on ZymoGenetics' senior management team.

Nextrials (San Ramon, CA) has appointed Robert Barr to the position of chief technology officer and Michelle Dockhorn as vice president of global sales and marketing.

BT Pharma (Toulouse, France) appointed Professor Thierry Hercend, MD, president of the company's supervisory board, where he will be able to utilize over 30 years of academic and pharmaceutical experience

Xcelience (Tampa, FL) brought four new people on board including, Omar Lamm, Dontae Solomon, and Robert Steitz as associates in business development, and Kim Black-Washington as director of marketing and strategic development.

Alliances

• Bio-Kinetic Clinical Applications (Springfield, MO)—QPS' (Newark, DE) clinical research unit—and Quintiles (Research Triangle Park, NC) have collaborated to create an integrated Cardiac Safety Service for sponsors.

• MMG (Rockville, MD) will utilize Exco InTouch's (Essex, UK) REACT short messaging service technology to enhance patient and subject recruitment and retention services for sponsors.

• Paradigm Spine (New York, NY) has chosen PharmaPros' (Cambridge, MA) Dataflow Manager, an automated trial management solution, for current and future studies in its pipeline.

• In an effort to provide continuing education on electronic data standards for FDA reviewers, Octagon Research (Wayne, PA) and Clinical Data Standards Interchange Consortium (CDISC; Austin, TX) are collaborating to take on this education initiative.

• AbD Serotec (Oxford, UK) and e2v biosensors (Essex, UK) have together initiated a research program, where AbD Serotec's recombinant antibodies will be utilized by e2v to conduct feasibility studies showing proof-of-concept of e2v's proprietary biosensor system Visucare.

Awards/Acknowledgements

• Merck & Co. (Whitehouse Station, NJ) has awarded Kforce Clinical Research (Tampa, FL) its "Outstanding Operational Award in Clinical Development," making the company one of 13 to be acknowledged at Merck's Annual Supplier Recognition Forum.

• ICR's (Buckinghamshire, UK) education manager, Sue Fitzpatrick, has been awarded honorary membership in the Bulgarian Association of Clinical Research (Sofia, Bulgaria) after she trained over 75% of Bulgaria's research community over five years.

• Frost & Sullivan (San Antonio, TX), a growth partnership company, acknowledged Oracle (Redwood Shores, CA) as number one in North America for clinical trial management, based on the company's revenue and share in the industry.

• Exco InTouch (Essex, UK) has been awarded the "Best IT Strategy Award" at the 2008 European Outsourcing Awards, where factors such as the effective deployment of the technology and its benefits to users were taken into account by the international judging panel.

Company News

• Octagon Research Solutions (Wayne, PA) has established its new Web site, www.viewpointquantum.com. which utilizes blogs and discussion forums to draw attention to the company's subject matter experts.

• Duke University Health System (DUHS; Durham, NC) has completed a successful go-live of the Velos (Fremont, CA) eResearch system, a clinical trials management system that will register all of DUHS' protocols and subjects for all cancer clinical trials.

• Upon raising £1.25 million ($2.4 million) in a second round of investment funding, Syntropharma (Newtown St. Boswells, Scotland) will use these funds for the final stages of development for its reformulated Selegiline transdermal patch.

• Attendants of the Society for Clinical Data Management Annual Conference were provided with Windows Mobile hand-held PDAs on behalf of CRF (Waltham, MA) to complete event evaluation surveys.

• C-TASC (Baltimore, MD) has been given a fast track Small Business Innovation Research grant by the National Institutes of Health, which will provide the necessary funding for the company to develop its proprietary Web-based data management solution StudyCTMS.

• The FDA has selected CDISC (Austin, TX) to provide training over the next two years to FDA reviewers on regulatory submissions.

Mergers/Acquisitions

• Tripos (St. Louis, MO) will acquire Pharsight (Mountain View, CA) for approximately $57 million, under an agreement in which all of Pharsights' stockholders will receive $5.50 for each outstanding share of common stock.

• In an effort to enhance its capabilities to offer Phase II-IV clinical trials support, data management, and biostatistics services in Eastern Europe, PPD (Wilmington, NC) has acquired InnoPharm (Smolensk, Russia).

• The boards of directors for both Eli Lilly (Indianapolis, IN) and ImClone Systems (New York, NY) have approved a merger agreement, in which Lilly will acquire ImClone for $6.5 billion.