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Asli Memisoglu

As the new director of biostatistics and data management for WorldCare Clinical (Boston, MA), Asli Memisoglu, PhD, will oversee the development of image analysis performance metrics, statistical design, and database management between the company's project managers, sponsors, and independent reviewers.

Jack Polidoro

Joining BASi (West Lafayette, IN) in December of 2008, Jack Polidoro, PhD, will now focus on the company's Evansville, Indiana, operations, where he will work with the toxicology lab's business development efforts.

Robert Fetterman

The executive team of WorldCare Clinical (Boston, MA) has gained Robert Fetterman as associate director of imaging services, where he will leverage the clinical core laboratory and imaging experience of the company to extend the function of its imaging transmission platform, WorldPro.

Antal Hajos

In his new role as managing director and chief executive officer of Europe for Ecron Acunova (Frankfurt, Germany), Antal Hajos, PhD, will have overall responsibility for all business, strategic, and operational aspects of the European operations.

Trio Clinical Research (Durham, NC) has expanded its team with the additions of Kurt Mussina as the new senior vice president of business development and Jim Calvin as the senior vice president of clinical services.

Set to lead core business functions are three new additions to the Lantheus Medical Imaging (Billerica, MA) team: Mary Taylor as vice president of regulatory affairs, Ildia Gonzalez Ojeda as senior director of quality operations, and Jeffrey Young as global controller.

Three managers have been appointed at Synexus' (Manchester, UK) UK headquarters, including Noreen Younis as feasibility manager, Joanne Lee, as contract center manager, and Michael Fort as Synexus chief executive.

Alliances

• To provide a more reliable and precise measure of patients' responses to therapies, ICON (Dublin, Ireland) and MedAvante (Hamilton, NJ) have entered into an alliance agreement.

• Combining services in clinical pharmacology and centralized cardiac testing, an alliance between Cetero (Cary, NC) and Cardiocore (Bethesda, MD) intends to optimize the design, conduct, and reporting of cardiac safety issues.

• To provide 20 Clinsys (Bedminster, NJ) employees with Six Sigma Green Belt Training the company is partnering with North Carolina State University.

• A partnership between ACM Global Central Lab (Rochester, NY) and Chindex International (Bethesda, MD) will now provide central lab services in China at United Family Hospitals, Beijing.

• The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) has chosen to use Velos' (Fremont, CA) services and its product, Velos eResearch, which is set to be implemented at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center as well as in an affiliated clinical research network, Translational Oncology Research International.

• Deploying TAKE Supply Chain's (Austin, TX) Gemini for Oracle Process Manufacturing, Three Rivers Pharmaceuticals (Warrendale, PA) has reported an improvement in global distribution efficiency and productivity.

Awards

• Along with three others, ChemSW (Fairfield, CA) has been rated as one of the top IT vendors for overall customer satisfaction in 2008 by VendorRate (Los Gatos, CA), an Internet site that rates and compares technology vendors.

• Being acknowledged for its contributions to the life sciences industry in the Asia/Pacific region, Parexel (Boston, MA) received "Best Performing Clinical Research Organization" from BioSingapore.

• Honoring 100 of Silicon Valley's most influential businesswoman, as nominated by their community and selected by a panel of judges, the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal acknowledged ProTrial's (Mountain View, CA) co-founders Jodi Andrews and Inger Arum as Women of Influence in 2009.

Company News

• Upon entering into the Ireland market, Actavis (Morristown, NJ) now plans to create up to 25 new local jobs over the next five years as well as to launch more than 120 generic drugs in the country.

• A new function added to Sparta Systems' (Holmdel, NJ) TrackWise will allow the enterprise quality management solution to integrate with other ERP systems and other entrenched enterprise software applications.

• Celebrating 20 years of growth, Health Decisions (Durham, NC) has grown from three to 150 employees and provided sponsors with adaptive solutions to their clinical development.

• In partnership with Greensource Solutions, CRF Health (Lansdale, PA) is launching its PDA Recycling Campaign, which will allow its customers to dispose of unwanted PDA devices in an environmentally friendly way while simultaneously raising money for charity.

• The volunteer-led nonprofit industry association committed to improving the interoperability of health care information systems—Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) International—has approved Nextrials (San Ramon, CA) as a member.

• At its Welsh headquarters Penn Pharma (South Wales, UK) is launching an expansion program that is backed by the Welsh Assembly Government's Single Investment fund, and will create 133 jobs and safeguard an additional 100 jobs.

• Resolutions Rapid Enrollment Solutions (Solana Beach, CA) is expanding its in-house call center activities, which are designed with the intent to reduce the time a study coordinator has to spend retrieving past medical records.

• Reaching its 400th clinical trial using electronic data capture, Quintiles (Research Triangle Park, NC) has enrolled more than 400,000 patients at about 30,000 sites using EDC.

• After signing an agreement with FDA's CDER to assist in establishing standards for clinical trial data submission, and after the Study Data Tabulation Model (SDTM) format became a requirement, C-TASC (Baltimore, MD) announced an offering of consulting services to companies that need assistance in converting into the new format.

• Helping Chesapeake IRB (Columbia, MD) deliver the most efficient reviews is its CIRBI (Center for IRB Intelligence), a fully electronic, 21 CFR Part 11 compliant IRB management platform, that also allows online access to all IRB documents.

• SGS Life Science Services, part of the SGS Group (Geneva, Switzerland), recently sponsored one family's participation, the Michels, in the North Pole Marathon, which raises money and awareness for Cystic Fibrosis research.

Mergers/Acquisitions

• By acquiring Magen Biosciences, PPD (Wilmington, NC) has expanded its compound partnering program into dermatology, which will initially begin in indications of psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and acne.

• A recent agreement will sell PPD's (Wilmington, NC) wholly owned subsidiary Piedmont Research Center to Charles River Laboratories (Wilmington, MA).

New Facilities

• Continuing with plans of doubling clinical trial capacity in Pretoria, South Africa, Synexus (Manchester, UK) has completed the first phase of this expansion with the opening of a new research center in the country.

• BBK (Newton, MA) has opened BBK Worldwide—Osaka, G.K., located in Osaka, Japan, to help Japanese companies within the clinical trials industry enroll and retain patients more efficiently.