Wondering whether to hire an MBA or an MD to head up global clinical development for your contract research organization (CRO)? You can always do what MDS Pharma Services did: get both—in one guy.

He’s London native James Pusey, and he recently joined the King of Prussia, Pa.-based company as vice president and general manager of global development business, which manages late-stage trials.

Pusey may be new to CROs, but he’s certainly no stranger to the pharma and biotech world.

Before joining MDS, he was president and CEO of the Tempe, AZ-based biotech firm Orthologic. Prior to that, he served as executive vice president for neurology at Geneva, Switzerland-based biotech company Serono, now part of E. Merck.

Been Around the Block

Before that? Vice president of marketing and a therapeutic area leader for central nervous system, pain and infection at AstraZeneca USA. Before that? International medical advisor in Southeast Asia managing anti-viral drug development trials for The Wellcome Foundation. And before that? He held a variety of positions at SmithKline Beecham, including international marketing manager, and vice president of global clinical trials. And before that? He worked on staff as an emergency room surgeon in four London hospitals. 

Pusey says MDS Pharma is growing at an annual rate of about 30 percent. Given that, the most important challenges the company faces right now are “matching the growth that we have with training and recruitment to ensure that the move toward perfection is maintained. You cannot do too much training and recruitment,” he said.

Hire, Hire, Hire

In fact, one of Pusey’s first moves at MDS Pharma when he came on six weeks ago was to organize a dedicated team to do “constant recruitment,” he said. Here are some of the positions they are seeking to fill inside the U.S. and internationally.

Educated at London University, Pusey holds bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery degrees from the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, and an MBA from the London Business School.

Three In One

MDS Pharma is one of three business units that make up the publicly traded conglomerate MDS Inc. (TSX and NYSE: MDS) The other two are MDS Analytical Technologies (life sciences tools) and MDS Nordion (molecular imaging). MDS Pharma Services revenue was $522 million for 2006, which constituted 46 percent of MDS Inc.‘s revenues. The lion’s share—95 percent—of MDS Inc.’s revenue comes from markets outside the U.S. MDS as a whole has 6,200 employees, 4,000 of which work for MDS Pharma, which has 39 offices in 26 countries.

Oncology is the CRO’s strongest therapeutic area, followed by metabolism and cardiovascular, then vaccines and asthma, said Pusey.

—by Suz Redfearn