I-many, a leading provider of contract management software, has introduced version 5.2 of its I-many Contract Management Suite for Life Sciences. I-many is an advanced business intelligence reporting tool. David Blumberg, executive vice president of fulfillment services for I-many, said: “Factors related to regulatory changes, competition, customer demand, and compliance create the need for more data visibility. I-many products hold valuable business information, and with the new 5.2 release, customers will gain greater visibility and better access to critical information.”

etrials made Peter Benton’s appointment as COO permanent. He had joined the clinical technology suite during the summer. “I am extremely pleased that he has decided to take this pivotal role as we transform etrials into a more responsive, client-driven organization,” said Chip Jennings, president and CEO of etrials. “Peter has, in the past few months, already made great strides improving the company’s service delivery process. His focus on the customer and bottom-line results will be instrumental in achieving enhanced performance going forward.” The release is here.

DataTrak International reported weak financial results. Revenue dropped 52 percent. The unprofitable Cleveland company has fired 28 employees this year in an effort to match revenues and costs. President and CEO Jeff Green acknowedged difficult circumstances but said the company continues to win customers on both sides of the Atlantic: “We believe that there are several significant instances where global clients are openly not satisfied with their current clinical trials technology provider where we can capitalize on these opportunities because of our software development advancements over the past year.” The release is here.

A New Jersey court has ruled in favor of contract research organization Huntingdon Life Sciences. The court ruling states that an animal rights group, the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NJSPCA), cannot file a civil lawsuit against Huntingdon. The lawsuit, using undercover video footage, had Huntingdon charged with animal cruelty and negligent hiring and training. The judges ruled that the activist group couldn’t collect because the company didn’t cause the NJSPCA to suffer any losses.

Technology company Take Solutions has added another event as part of their 2007 webcast series, “Preparing eCTD Submissions.” The one-hour webinar will discuss eCTD (electronic common technical document) submissions and recent changes within the regulations, which will affect companies now and into 2008. This webcast will be conducted on November 28th at 2:00 p.m. EST for the U.S. & Canada and November 29th at 10:00 a.m. CET for Europe. Jay Johnson, senior life sciences analyst for Take Solutions, said: “Beginning January 1, 2008, CDER will no longer be accepting eNDA’s. This fact has helped the industry to adopt the eCTD standard. We’re conducting this webcast to help companies understand what this new requirement means and how to address it at their specific organization.”

More discussions and conferences are being held in anticipation of the FDA eCTD filing format adherence in 2008 for all electronic submissions. Global compliance company QUMAS is having one of its regulatory advisors in the life sciences practice, Patricia Santos-Serrão, speak on “Managing the Successful Transition to eCTD” at the Sixth Annual DIA eCTD Conference in San Diego, California. Santos-Serrão will outline common challenges faced by life sciences companies and regulatory affairs groups with the transition from paper and legacy submissions systems to an electronic document management system. Our interview with her is here.

PostPath, creator of an email and collaboration server, has partnered with leading virtualization solutions provider VMware. The immediate availability of PostPath Server VMware Edition was also announced. This is the first enterprise-compatible virtualized corporate email server environment. Maryland-based contract research organization EMMES Corporation, has been an early user of the software. Evan Wagner, director of network operations and security at EMMES, said: “We are finding it invaluable to be able to easily virtualize our corporate email servers, and to use virtualized data management to handle our backup and restore needs. Virtualization, combined with PostPath’s efficient architecture and drop-in interoperability with our Outlook desktops, is delivering improved operational efficiency in our system administration.”

Whew. You can sleep a little easier tonight. Procter & Gamble’s cosmetic division has sequenced the genome of Malassezia globosa, the fungus responsible for dandruff. The most difficult part of the project, friends tell us, was getting enough dandruff from the completely bald Craig Venter, the bashful geneticist who guided a multi-year, billion-dollar race to sequence ... his own genes. The full release is here.

Have dandruff? Send it to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).