Quintiles Transnational will open a central lab in Mumbai, India. According to a news release, the facility will be equipped and staffed before the end of 2006 and is expected to be ready to support new trials by the first quarter of 2007. The lab is located in Leela Business…more...

Shares in contract research organization Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD) dropped 4 percent yesterday after the company said its president was leaving. Wall street analysts, however, are uniformly upbeat on the company’s prospects. Everything is going smoothly at the company: revenue in the quarter was up 15 percent. Growth in its…more...

The electronic data capture (EDC) company etrials reported $2 million in new contracts last month. The company said the five new contracts in September represented additional work for three current clients and one new customer. None were named. A medical device firm will use etrials and explore e-clinical technology for…more...

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) today announced grant recipients for its Cancer Genome Atlas project, including three institutions that are using upstart microarray platforms from Agilent. Instead of tools from Affymetrix, the University of North Carolina, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center will all use technology from Agilent.…more...

Lester Crawford, former head of the FDA, plead guilty to making false statements and concealing ownership in companies his agency was regulating. A judge will sentence Crawford in January. His punishment could include prison time or probation and a fine. “I want to accept full responsibility for my errors and…more...

Mark Senak is a lawyer and works at the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard. This week, Senak’s Eye On FDA blog tallies up members of FDA advisory committees without online CVs. Why are some committees posting all their members’ biographies, and others only doing so sporadically? It’s an excellent point. Senak…more...

The diary firm says 10,000 people are now certified to use its platform. That’s a five-fold increase since the program was started. The company’s network of contract research organizations (CROs) is also growing, and now includes 8 of the top 10 CROs. A few partners include Dendrite International, VIASYS Healthcare…more...

A U.S.-Israeli firm, Business Events, claims to be able to perform data mining on all of a large company’s data. News accounts neglect to say how they load all of a large company’s data. But a story online is interesting because the principals behind Business Events got their start in…more...

Authorities in Canada are changing the rules for clinical trials. They’re taking a more proactive stance than colleagues in Britain, which saw 6 patients severely injured in a clinical trial earlier in 2006. (In the most serious case, one British patient lost his fingers and toes.) The Canadians have implemented…more...

Parexel International acquired the California Clinical Trials Medical Group for $65 million. Founded in 1981, California Clinical Trials Medical Group (CCTMG) has 180 employees and is based in Glendale, California, where one of four facilities has 16 exam rooms. The firm does research in trials from Phase I-IV. CCTMG says…more...