Life sciences firm AAIPharma is expanding in South America, purchasing the contract research organization (CRO) Instituto de Pesquisa Clinica in Sao Paulo, Brazil. AAIPharma already has CRO operations in Argentina and Peru. “Expanding AAIPharma’s presence in Brazil is important for our customers, who want access to the substantial South American patient populations,” said Ludo Reynders, AAIPharma’s chief executive. “With the highly trained clinical research professionals from [the Latin American firm], AAIPharma can offer pharmaceutical and biotech customers broader reach for their large multinational trials.”

Phase Forward hopes to sell an additional 5.5 million shares to the public, at $15 per share, potentially raising some $78 million. Here’s the news release.

Drug safety software firm Relsys and document security firm Intrasphere will partner. “In our twentieth anniversary year, Relsys continues to offer innovative solutions to solve the life science industry’s most pressing needs,” said Dave Bajaj, president and CEO of Relsys. “By partnering with a leader like Intrasphere, we expect that our clients will benefit from our mutual expertise in regulatory compliance and business process improvement.” Added Sanket Agrawal, Relsys’ chief strategy officer: “The pharmaceutical industry is increasingly looking towards vendors to provide end-to-end safety solutions from appropriate strategy to efficient processes to effective software applications.

The Avandia story continues to mushroom, with both GSK and the FDA on the defensive about when they knew the $3 billion diabetes drug posed additional cardiovascular risk—and how significant that risk is. This one could get ugly. The New York Times has a story about where the data came from. Is Cleveland Clinic’s Steve Nissen, an Avandia critic, working for GSK rival Takeda? That’s the gossip on the Wall Street Journal message boards.

workflow.com makes systems for electronic health records (EHR), practice management (PM), document imaging, messaging, and work flow. The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) recently announced that workflow.com’s product workflowEHR is CCHIT certified, and meets CCHIT ambulatory electronic health record criteria for 2006. As a CCHIT certified product, workflowEHR, powered by OnBase, has been tested and passed inspection all criteria for functionality (ability to create and manage electronic records for all patients, as well as automating work flow in a physician’s office); interoperability (a first step in the ability to receive and send electronic data to other entities such as laboratories); and security (ability to keep patients’ information safe).

The organizers of the annual Pharma ChemOutsourcing Conference and Exhibition are pleased to announce the 2007 event featuring 80 industry speakers from a diverse group of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The event is scheduled to be held between September 10–11, 2007, at the Sheraton Conference in East Rutherford, NJ. The conference focuses exclusively on sourcing/outsourcing pharmaceutical chemistry topics and attracts 400–500 industry attendees from around the world. For more information, click here.

Neuren has announced that it has retained Hesperion, a Basel-based contract research organization with operations in the U.S., as the global manager for its Phase III trial of Glypromate, which promises to provide protection against cell death in the brain. Hesperion is a leading provider of clinical trial management services for studies in cardiovascular indications. The trial will be initiated this month with all sites selected and drug manufacture completed. The Phase III study, which aims to reduce cognitive impairment in cardiac surgery patients, is expected to take 18 months and involve 600 patients throughout the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.

Holmes Biopharma is a contract research organization focused on providing integrated and cost effective clinical development services that help the pharmaceutical industry introduce new drug products rapidly from laboratory to the market. The Company’s subsidiary, Qualia Clinical Service, recently received its largest research contract to date from a single client, valued at approximately $1 million. This and other contracts with leading pharmaceutical companies bring the total committed contracts to approximately $5 million. “We are now receiving requests for several follow-up projects from repeat clients, demonstrating confidence in our quality of service and timely delivery,” said Dr. Sohail Khattak, president and CEO of Qualia.

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