Althea Technologies, a service provider for pharmaceutical companies, announced that E.J. Brandreth has joined the company as VP of quality and regulatory affairs. “We are very excited to welcome E.J. Brandreth to Althea. The diverse experience he brings to the company is particularly valuable. His background in clinical and commercial biological products is a perfect fit for the expanding scope of projects at Althea,” stated Magda Marquet, president and co-CEO of Althea Technologies.

Cato BioVentures made an investment in Abeome , a Georgia-based biotech company. The deal includes a collaboration with Cato Research, the fund’s affiliated contract research organization (CRO). Joel Eisner, associate principal of Cato BioVentures, states: “We are fascinated with Abeome’s ability to develop such a large library of monoclonal antibodies. They have pushed the bottleneck of therapeutic development to the screening step, which will provide a broader selection of novel antibodies to more cancer targets.” Here’s the release.

Sekisui Medical will buy XenoTech a pre-clinical CRO. The acquisition establishes a U.S. presence and expands its customer base. “The acquisition expands the pharmacokinetics contract service business into the U.S. markets and provides the platform to introduce the technology and know-how of Sekisui Medical to the large U.S. marketplace,” said Mutsumi Fukuda, Sekisui Medical’s president.

This Medscape article, touts adaptive designs. “We chose this Bayesian design because we would have needed a massive trial if we had used frequency statistics; the use of an adaptive design minimized patient resources,” says oncologist Hyman Muss, associate director of the Vermont Cancer Center.

Veeda Clinical Research chose Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Watson laboratory information management system (LIMS) for Ahmedabad, India, and Oxford, England. John Allinson, director at Veeda, explains: “Our Indian facility alone tests up to 200 samples per day per instrument. Veeda currently has three laboratories around the world that handle 4.5 million samples at present, moving towards 9.0 million samples per year. Watson LIMS allows us to automate a sampling system previously undertaken manually. This has been a significant factor in our use of labor resources and will enable us to increase our capacity.” Here’s the release.

INC Research will cut three percent of its staff. There is no announcement on the INC website. This article discusses other CRO activity in the North Carolina region.

Tigermed Consulting, a CRO based in Shanghai, received $5 million in venture capital from Qiming Venture Partners of Shanghai and Seattle. Tigermed offers out-sourced R&D, including clinical trials (with an emphasis on new chemical entities), biological statistics, medical translation services, and registration services. Qimeng Ventures, with $500 million under management, focuses on high-growth companies in China. In health care, Qimeng has invested in one other CRO, Crown Bioscience. Here’s the release.

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