Encorium Group, a contract research organization (CRO), announced $3.2 million of additional new business contracts for Europe and North America. Revenue recognition for many of these contracts will begin in the current second quarter of 2008 with the remainder expected to occur on a proportional performance basis as services are performed on each project. Kenneth Borow, Encorium’s president and chief medical and strategic development officer, commented, “We continue to have a steady flow of contract signings across multiple therapeutic areas in Europe and North America. Our pipeline of verbally awarded but not yet signed contracts remains robust.” Here’s the release.

Eli Lilly shuffled a few senior executives. “Earlier this year, I asked each of our senior leaders to look closely at their respective areas to determine if they were optimally structured to meet the demands of our business and our company goals,” said John Lechleiter, who assumed the role of Lilly president and chief executive officer on April 1, 2008. “We are implementing a number of changes that will minimize bureaucracy by reducing the number of layers of management, will speed decision-making by clarifying roles and accountabilities, and will allow us to respond more quickly to critical business needs. In some cases, they have resulted in staffing changes, with new leaders in key roles.”

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Somnus Therapeutics, a private specialty pharmaceutical company that is developing a controlled-release sleep-maintenance therapeutic drug, announced the formation of its executive development team, based in Bedminster, New Jersey. “I’m excited to be leading this team of experienced professionals, all of us working hands-on, to develop a much-needed improved sleep therapeutic,” said Gary Cupit, CEO. “We see significant opportunity in the multi-billion dollar insomnia market for a new treatment with superior patient satisfaction and return-on-investment features. Our business model is to leverage a small but deeply experienced executive group with technical advances in formulation, controlled-release and clinical testing to develop a product addressing an underserved but large market segment relatively quickly and less expensively.”

Court Square Group, a consulting firm specializing in strategic information technology, business processes and project management, announced that it is partnering with Datafarm, to host its electronic submission software solutions for life sciences organizations that need to manage their eCTD (electronic common technical document) submissions with regulatory agencies. Court Square will help Datafarm customers install and manage their S-Cubed eCTD software or offer them a hosted solution.

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Nexonia said its online timesheet and expense report applications will be used by ProTrials, a contract research organization (CRO), to streamline its processes and improve efficiencies. “Nexonia was an obvious choice due to their application flexibility and because they could quickly address areas of customization that we required. They also provided a seamless integration into our existing business processes and QuickBooks accounting system,” said Inger Arum, cofounder and president of ProTrials. The firm will enable ProTrials staffers to fill out electronic timesheets and expense reports anywhere in the world. Here’s the release.

Business Week has a story on the glacially-paced effort to reduce paper consumption in the business world. Fun fact: the amount of paper usage at the office has dropped, but is still 127 lbs. (or 56 kg. for those in modern nations) per person annually. Half of what we print is thrown away in 24 hours, the story says. The mortgage industry is trying to strip paper out of the home-buying process. Here’s the link.

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