Contract research organization (CRO) Parexel International (Nasdaq: PRXL) has a new guy on the clinical operations side. He’s Joe Avellone, and he’s coming in as vice president of operations for clinical research services, Americas.

Avellone, an M.D., is slated to run Parexel’s phase II-IV clinical development programs and manage the company’s Americas Medical Affairs Group, which consists of Parexel-employed physicians in North and South America who work with clients on trials.
Avellone had been CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Veritas Medicine, a health care technology company supporting clinical trials, since late 2000. Before that, he held senior management positions at Healthvision—a health care technology firm in Irving, Texas—and served as COO for BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts.

Harvard-trained

Avellone received his M.D. from the Harvard Medical School, and did his general surgery residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He also has a master’s in public administration from Harvard University. After his residency, Avellone practiced surgery for four years in New Hampshire at the Concord Hospital.

Avellone will work in Parexel’s headquarters in Waltham, Mass.

Revenue, Earnings Healthy

Besides the addition of Avellone, other things are going great guns for 25-year-old Parexel. For the three months ended March 31, the company’s revenue increased 21.5 percent to a record $191.2 million, compared with $157.3 million in the prior year period. Net income for the quarter totaled $10.8 million, compared with $6.8 million the year before.

Breaking revenue down among the company’s divisions, $143.5 million was generated from Parexel’s clinical research services division; $29.7 million hailed from consulting and marketing services; and $18 million came in from Perceptive Informatics, the company’s technology arm.

Next?

Parexel said new business wins in the quarter were robust, resulting in ending a backlog of approximately $1.4 billion—up from $949.3 million at the end of the same quarter in 2006.

What’s coming down the pike? Parexel predicts it will close out its fiscal year on June 30 with revenues of $734 to $740 million.

—by Suz Redfearn