Should contract research organizations in a dicey economy explore a fixed price model—a departure from sacrosanct hourly billing rates? That's the heresy in this Life Science Leader article by Chris Porter, an executive at Clinipace. Porter observes that some lawyers, of all people, have been persuaded not to charge by the hour. Such arrangements would avoid awkward demands for money that are an aspect of many clinical trials. "As many sponsors seek a more strategic relationship with their CRO, fixed-cost billing helps build that relationship by allowing more focus on the study instead of on negotiating pricing," Porter writes. Here's a ClinPage article on the firm.

Separately, Clinipace purchased Worldwide Clinical Research, a contract research organization. Terms were not disclosed. The two companies will be running a total of 70 projects. The firms will maintain U.S. offices in North Carolina and Kansas, as well as across South America. Said Barb Geiger, executive VP of clinical operations: “The synergies between WWCR and Clinipace will provide our clients with a complete range of technology-driven services, ranging from clinical operations all the way through regulatory submission."

SAS is featured in this New York Times story, which says the company's well-regarded status as a beloved employer may be about to change. That's because it's facing new competition from mammoth consulting operations like IBM, which are targeting the juicy business analytics software sector. IBM and others are trying to focus less on biostatisticians and programmers, and more on ordinary corporate workers eager to analyze their own data.

Parexel’s Perceptive Informatics division announced enhanced support for nuclear imaging in cardiovascular trials. The firm is now supporting two third-party solutions, from Hermes and Invia. “Perceptive is committed to continually incorporating innovative state-of-the-art technologies into our capabilities to help biopharmaceutical companies further improve the use of medical imaging as a surrogate endpoint,” says Kenneth Faulkner, VP of medical imaging at Perceptive. Here’s a release.

Covance inked a deal with a biomarker firm in Texas, Rules Based Medicine. The smaller company's "unique biomarker technology platform, combined with Covance's recent acquisitions and alliances in biomarkers and genomics, strengthens our ability to provide comprehensive biomarker discovery, verification, validation, and deployment in both the preclinical and clinical setting," said Deborah Tanner, president of Covance central laboratory services. Here's the release.

i3 Global announced two new partnerships in patient recruiting: with Acurian and BioPharm Insight. i3 will offer data about clinical investigators. The goal in both cases is to improve the industry’s ability to find patients and assess the feasibility of trials. “The data is proprietary, highly relevant to the needs of the end user, and helps solve a mission critical need which is optimizing the patient recruitment process," said Sean Power, president and founder of BioPharm Insight. Here’s a release on the BioPharm deal and the Acurian partnership.

Officially, PPD is easing away from the drug development business to focus on its core strength as a contract research organization. (Here's our most recent story.) But the company still is selectively taking on the risks and rewards of drug development as a sponsor, as a new deal with Astellas indicates. PPD will take over development of two drugs for irritable bowel syndrome. Astellas will have the option to get them back if the compounds make it through Phase II. PPD also recently acquired a 660-employee firm in China, Bioduro; here's the release.

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