General Dynamics Viz, a unit of the military contractor, debuted CoMotion Trials. It’s a collaborative decision-support tool that enables hundreds of researchers, analysts and managers to see, analyze, share and comment on the same data in the clinical trial process. The software integrates separate systems, displaying data in easily configurable charts and other visualizations. “CoMotion Trials streamlines the flow of information during every phase of the clinical trials process, and that means significant cost and time savings for everyone involved,” said Mike Capsambelis, product management director for General Dynamics.

The sensible New England Journal of Medicine editorial on FDA-bashing. Two surprising sentences: “Between 1988 and 2007, additional FDA responsibilities were imposed by 137 specific statutes, 18 statutes of general applicability, and 14 executive orders.  At the same time, the FDA received a 2007 federal appropriation of only $1.57 billion—less than 75 percent of the budget for the school district in its home county in Maryland, and about the same as the projected cost of the infamous Alaskan ‘bridge to nowhere.’ ”

Noven Pharmaceuticals named former Pfizer senior executive Peter Brandt, age 51, as its president and CEO. “We could not be more pleased to have an executive with Peter’s background, experience and vision join the Noven team,” said Wayne Yetter, Noven’s chairman.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced a typical reorganization. In a message to employees, Andrew Witty, the incoming CEO, detailed new titles for members of his team and said there were good sales opportunities in the developing world. Witty said: “It is clear that our industry is facing a rapidly changing environment. We are also presented with increasing challenges, such as cost containment, regulatory pressures and generic competition.” This angry blog post details a journal article that explored the biostatistics underlying one of the company’s publications.

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Three members of The Scripps Research Institute faculty have been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The newly elected members are Bruce Beutler, Michael Oldstone and Peter Wright. With this election, the number of National Academy of Sciences members currently working at Scripps Research stands at 19. “It’s both a great honor for Scripps Research and an indicator of the unique quality of the institute’s science that an organization of our size should have three faculty members elected to the nation’s most prestigious scientific society in the same year,” said Scripps Research president Richard Lerner.

A common electronic platform on which pharma companies can create open source applications for clinical trials was launched last week. The Clinical Research Information eXchange (CRIX) is a collaborative effort among government, the bio-pharmaceutical industry and academia. Here’s the article.

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Icon announced quarterly earnings. Revenues rose an impressive 48 percent to $136 million. Profits were $16.9 million, compared to $12.3 million during the same period last year.  “It has been an excellent start to 2008,” said chairman John Climax. “Business wins were again strong with $369 million of net business awarded in the quarter. We are raising our 2008 guidance for revenue and EPS to $840-$860 million.” Here’s the release.

Covance announced quarterly financial results. Revenue was up 15 percent to $412 million. Profits rose also, but disappointed Wall Street. One quote about employee turnover, located in the Seeking Alpha transcript of the call with Wall Street, caught our eye. “We were under in single digits in terms of employee turnover for the first time in company history, and it [has] been dropping,” said chairman and CEO Joe Herring. “Part of that is attributable to the work that we’ve been doing on our compelling offer strategy. I think the other thing that is happening is that working in large pharmaceutical companies and even in biotech companies has been more challenging in the past, with equity values not going up, [capital expenditures] going down, the 50,000 jobs eliminated in the industry last year.”

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