Waife & Associates, a process and technology consultancy, announced a new offering for vendors and contract research organizations. The package includes a lower-cost, comprehensive assessment of a vendor by the Waife team, in part to help it understand which sponsors will be likely to use a contract research organization's (CRO's) or vendor's services. Said Ronald Waife, president: “It is clear to us that those vendors do best when seeking consulting if they have their businesses fully analyzed, something many vendors are not likely to do because of concerns about cost. Our primary goal in helping vendor performance is to help research sponsors, who are increasingly reliant on these vendors, improve the likelihood that these vendors are prepared to perform with operational excellence, efficiency and stability." Here's the release.

The 33-year-old Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society (RAPS), the largest trade group for regulatory professionals (with 12,000 members in 50 countries), has opened an office in Brussels. RAPS, which is headquartered near Washington, D.C., also opened an office in Tokyo last year. Says RAPS executive director Sherry Keramidas, “RAPS’ new office in Brussels allows us to better serve our European members and be more responsive to their needs, as well as more closely track trends at both EU and individual country levels.” According to RAPS' research, about 70 percent of regulatory professionals say their work encompasses regulatory issues in multiple geographic regions. A release on the new office is here.

The FDA has approved the first drug developed specifically for cancer in dogs. The tyrosine kinase inhibitor Palladia, from Pfizer Animal Health, can now treat mast-cell tumors in canines. (Previous cancer drugs used in veterinary medicine were originally developed for people and not approved for animals by the FDA, although since 1994 it has been legal to give animals selected human drugs.) This Wall Street Journal health blog post points out that development is a sign of public willingness to spend money on pets, the promise of targeted therapies for cancer and the drug industry’s push to expand existing revenue streams. Here is Pfizer's release.

Quintiles opened a new office in Accra, Ghana. The company says the access it will provide to the surrounding West African countries will facilitate monitoring of an ongoing malaria vaccine study. The office is based on the grounds of the University of Ghana at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research. As part of the agreement, Quintiles will provide training for new investigators and clinical research associates (CRAs). Gillian Corken, CEO of Quintiles Africa, says, “Initially the focus will be on diseases such as malaria, TB and HIV. However, we anticipate that as the infrastructure and economies in Africa develop, like many other non-traditional regions before, it will play an increasingly important role in recruiting patients for many other therapeutic areas, such as oncology and cardiovascular."

In unreleated news, Quintiles is the only major contract research organization on the Computerworld magazine’s 2009 “100 Best Places to Work in IT" list. This year—the company's second on the list—it moves up from No. 37 to No. 16. It has 321 IT employees. “Quintiles’ IT managers, at every level, work very hard to create a challenging and rewarding work environment for our 600-plus IT professionals around the world,” says Quintiles executive VP and chief information officer Bill Deam. The Computerworld report factors in average salary and bonus increases, the percentage of employees getting promotions, staff turnover rates, training and development and the percentage of women and minorities in staff and management positions. Genentech was No. 2 on the list. Here are more details.

The Indian clinical trials industry continues to mature. The Drugs Controller General has just decreed that all clinical trials conducted in the country must be registered in a national database. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) will handle the task. It's a two-year-old industry trade group. Previously, sponsors and CROs were only encouraged to register studies with the Clinical Trials Registry-India. The ICMR’s registry incorporates the 20 items endorsed by the World Health Organization's International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (WHO-ICTRP) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

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