Inc. Research moved its headquarters to a new 120,000 sq. ft. location in Raleigh, North Carolina. Said CEO James Ogle in a press release: "This move better positions us to accommodate future growth of our clinical trials outsourcing services." The FDA awarded a five-year data conversion contract to Octagon Research and…more...

DSG, an electronic data capture (EDC) supplier, said the Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine (CNRM) is using its system in three studies of traumatic brain injury, which has affected 144,000 military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The CNRM is a joint research effort of the U.S. military and the…more...

Patient diary firm invivodata has shepherded the publication of a new textbook on patient-reported outcomes (PRO). The technology is truly coming into its own. Each chapter was written by an expert or team of experts from academia and industry. The editors were Brian Tiplady from invivodata and Bill Byrom from the…more...

Charles River has been pushed to put itself on the auction block. Shareholders (a pension fund in particular) are said to be unhappy. That's the word from the Wall Street Journal in a subscription-only article. The same activist investors blocked this year's proposed purchase of WuXi Apptech. Central imaging core lab…more...

PPD named a new senior VP of global central labs. Elena Logan most recently served as divisional VP at ACM Global Central Laboratory; she's also worked at other contract research organizations and began her career in the cardiovascular group at BMS. Here's a release. Lab Corp. of America has been on…more...

Patient diary firm invivodata announced its next annual patient-reported outcomes (PRO) conference. The meeting will be held on April 12-14, 2011 in Ft. Lauderdale. The meeting "is an opportunity for clinical researchers to advance their knowledge on the what, how, and when of successfully incorporating PROs into product development and commercialization,”…more...

Purdue Pharma selected Medidata's study design tool. Said Purdue's Charlie Willlmer, senior director of clinical systems: "It is the only solution on the market today with the capabilities to produce higher quality study design documents, enforce consistency across protocols, reduce the number of protocol amendments, and automate the configuration of downstream…more...

Parexel won an award for "research team of the year" from Scrip, an industry publication. The independent judges, according to the press release, "were particularly impressed with the clinical research team's ability to rapidly complete study start-up and implement the required time lines." Adaptive trials are rare but not unheard of.…more...

Forbes magazine has an article about Quintiles and a few quotations from its 66-year-old founder, Dennis Gillings. Pharmaceutical industry veterans won't learn anything new about the firm, but the magazine presents a fair and balanced portrait of the company for general readers. In the story, academic critics roll their eyes at…more...

U.S. officials are considering subsidies for research into new antibiotics. (Is there still some corner of the American economy that is not federally subsidized?) That's the good news in this article in the New York Times. To date, American politicians have never restrained physicians who happily prescribe antibiotics for viruses and…more...