Clinical research company PRA International has agreed to be bought by private equity firm Genstar Capitalfor $790 million. PRA went public in 2004. Genstar currently owns 12.8 percent of PRA shares. Under the agreement, PRA stockholders will be entitled to receive $30.50 in cash for each share of PRA common stock, a 24 percent premium over PRA’s average closing price for the three months ending July 24.

WuXi PharmaTech, the largest Chinese contract research organization (CRO) that specializes in preclinical laboratory testing services, has officially announced its IPO plans on the NYSE. The CRO will use $40 million of the proceeds to build a preclinical drug safety evaluation center in Suzhou, $40 million to expand its Jinshan facility, and the balance for “general corporate purposes.” The company said it will list 13.2 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) at an estimated price range offering falling between $11-13 per ADS. Its net revenues increased from $33.8 million in 2005 to $69.9 million in 2006, or a 107 percent increase. The company’s two largest customers in 2005 and 2006, Pfizer and Merck, made up 15.4 percent and 13.7 percent of its 2006 net revenues respectively.

The cinical technology suite etrials Worldwide announced a partnership between Roche Diagnostics’ ACCU-CHEK blood glucose meters and etrials’ eDiary solution. Nancy K. Lonsinger, vice president of diabetes care marketing at Roche Diagnostics said, “ACCU-CHEK meters, the global leader in blood glucose monitoring, will now transmit data via infrared connection to the etrials eDiary in order to improve data collection.” Patients can now report data immediately back to study investigators and sponsors for analysis and evaluation with an eDiary solution. “The collaboration with Roche Diagnostics demonstrates the industry’s increased attention to eClinical solutions and the importance of the seamless integration between internal and external data-collection technologies,” said Chip Jennings, president and CEO of etrials. “Sponsors can now rely on even more accurate and timely diabetes clinical data when captured with etrials’ eDiary. This is a competitive advantage both for the sponsor and for etrials.”

PharmaVOICE has recently named new additions to its top 100 list of most inspirational people in the life sciences industry. Medidata Solutions, a global provider of electronic clinical data capture, management and reporting solutions, announced that CEO and co-founder Tarek Sherif has been selected for building a talented team that has developed and driven Medidata Rave to become the leading EDC solution among global research organizations,  biopharmaceutical and medical device companies. Phase Forward, a provider of data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety, has the president of its Lincoln Technologies safety division Chan Russell named to the list, for leading the development of major pharmaceutical industry applications related to clinical data management, laboratory data analysis, adverse event tracking and reporting and safety signal detection. Nextrials, a provider of clinical research software and services, has James H. Rogers, the company co-founder, president and CEO, named to the PharmaVOICE 100 list. After working for companies such as Clinimetrics Research Associates, Xoma Corporation, Syntex, and SRI International, he co-founded Nextrials and helped it lead in cost-effective, practical and reliable technology alternatives to traditional paper-based clinical trial management. “We are extremely pleased to recognize the 100 individuals who comprise this year’s PharmaVOICE 100,” said Taren Grom, editor-in-chief and co-founder of PharmaVOICE. “These individuals translate industry issues into opportunities and take the time to mentor the next generation of leaders in the life-sciences arena.”

Akaza Research, a provider of the web-based open source OpenClinica clinical software for managing clinical research, has completed a comprehensive on site training for the KEMRI-Wellcome Research Programme for using the OpenClinica Enterprise platform for its clinical research activities in Kenya. The Wellcome-KEMRI (Kenya Medical Research Institute) Research Programme is working to accelerate high-quality research towards effective treatments of malaria and other important infectious diseases.

Steven Epstein’s book “Inclusion”

is about changing patient demographics in clinical research. You can find it here at Amazon.com. He’s a sociologist at the University of California at San Diego. The publisher says Epstein describes “reforms that forced researchers and pharmaceutical companies to diversify the population from which they drew for clinical research. That change has gone hand in hand with bold assertions that group differences in society are encoded in our biology—for example, that there are important biological differences in the ways that people of different races and sexes respond to drugs and other treatments.”


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