Roche will lose a high-level scientific executive in its California biotechnology division. Marc Tessier-Lavigne, chief scientific officer and head of neuroscience at the Genentech unit, will become president of Rockefeller University. The Swiss firm has strived to retain key personnel in California and downplayed the significance of Tessier-Lavigne's departure. Here's a profile and an announcement from Rockefeller.

Two commercial institutional review boards (IRB) have formed a strategic alliance. Copernicus Group (of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina) and IRB Services (of Ottawa, Ontario) will unite their efforts to simplify trial startups in North America. "An integrated team with members of both companies will ensure an expeditious and thorough ethical review," the firms said in an announcement.

It's not new. But here is an interesting graph of U.S. paper consumption for printers and copiers. The source of the data is a trade group called RISI, which doesn't bother to explain what its initials stand for. "Each office worker consumed an estimated 106 lbs. per year of copy paper in 2009, compared with 130 lbs. in 2005," the organization states. In brief, both home and office usage of paper are in decline; general business usage of paper peaked first. The usage of paper by the clinical trial community is not tabulated, alas.

The Society for Clinical Data Management (SCDM) has added a new chapter on project management to its guidelines for data management professionals. “Our traditional role of entering data, reviewing listings and writing or resolving queries is being redesigned as we watch,” said Susan Krikorian, CCDM, co-chair of the SCDM products and services committee. “Project management is a specific set of abilities and actions that we all must master within our more traditional clinical data management roles or in the newer, evolving opportunities.”

This blog post asks why the FDA hasn't pushed for CDISC data standards more energetically. "Less than 15 percent of the studies submitted to the FDA today follow any type of CDISC standard," BioClinica's Jennifer Price observes, citing a high-level FDA presentation. It's clear in Price's note that support for CDISC inside FDA is largely rhetorical, and unlikely to lead to regulatory requirements any time soon.

PPD will augment its own 300-bed Phase I facility with a new third-party network of U.S. sites. Its partners will include Commonwealth Biomedical Research of Madisonville, Kentucky, CNS Network of Los Angeles and Lovelace Respiratory Research of Albuquerque. Said Cindy Doerfler, VP of PPD’s Phase I effort: “By choosing to build relationships with sites that have demonstrated superior quality and the ability to recruit for various patient populations, we provide our clients a very flexible model for patient enrollment, site location and therapeutic expertise.” Here's a release.

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