Database giant Oracle said profits for the recent quarter were $765 million, a sharp rise above the $540 million at the same point a year ago. Revenue was up 18 percent, to $3.5 billion. Sales of new licenses totaled $1.1 billion during the period. It’s no secret that much of Oracle’s…more...

British and German police are considering criminal charges in the wake of a clinical trial gone awry in London. It’s not clear whether the target of such an investigation would be the sponsor of the trial, TeGenero AG, or the contract research organization (CRO) conducting it, Parexel International. Investors punished Parexel…more...

Bayer has selected biomarker informatics software from Genedata. The gene expression tools will be used at multiple research sites in Germany and U.S. that are studying cancer and heart disease. The Genedata Expressionist product is designed for data integration, processing and analysis. It uses statistical algorithms and visualization tools with data…more...

Costa Rica could be an enticing new location for business development, says the Los Angeles Times. Costa Rica exports more software per capita than any other country in Latin America. Could it be another Singapore? It’s hard to say. But MedTech Group of New Jersey, a manufacturer of surgical tools, checked…more...

A scientific modeling company, Simulations Plus, announced a new version of its flagship product, ClassPharmer.  David Miller, senior scientist and product manager for ClassPharmer at Simulations Plus, said: “Major revisions in the algorithms, coupled with a transition to a faster programming language, resulted in a ten- to thousand-fold speed increase in…more...

The simulation firm Entelos has expanded its collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development (J&JPRD). The new arrangement includes multiple therapeutic areas over a five-year term. During the first year of this new agreement, Entelos will dedicate several teams of research engineers and life scientists to support specific projects…more...

Fast Track Systems announced that Shire plc has selected TrialSpace Grants Manager and Crocas PBT for its global clinical trial planning and budgeting activities. Fast Track has industry-wide data on clinical trial costs, which it sells to sponsors of clinical trials. “Shire proactively seeks solutions that can assist us in operating…more...

A key FDA whistle-blower has been ordered to testify. Dr. David Graham once publicly estimated that Merck’s painkiller Vioxx had caused 160,000 heart attacks and strokes. The FDA had sought to block Graham’s testimony, but lost that motion in federal court yesterday. Like the big drug company, the FDA is the…more...

Eleven people have been killed in a nine-nation, 24-week clinical trial sponsored by Japan’s Eisai. The drug, Aricept, is for Alzheimer’s disease and is co-marketed with Pfizer.  The clinical trial was testing Aricept in patients with dementia traced to vascular problems. The drug is not approved for that indication in the…more...

Phoenix Data Systems has created an interactive voice response system from scratch and integrated it with its EDC offering. PDS IVR, as the new product is called, enables trial sponsors to rapidly implement and effectively configure FDA-compliant trials that combine IVR and EDC. The system also helps to manage multi-site, multi-country…more...