CRO conglomerate inVentiv Health has extended its deal with Swedish outfit NeuroVive Pharmaceutical, and the contract researcher says its ability to tailor its platform to developers of all sizes make it an ideal partner for drugmakers on the come-up.
NeuroVive is publicly traded mid-cap company working through a Phase III study of CicloMulsion, an intravenous treatment for cardiac injury following stenting procedures. After working with inVentiv through clinical development, NeuroVive is retaining the many-armed CRO for its commercialization services. And that's something of a case study on how large CROs like inVentiv have come to dominate the market, using their massive scale to offer mid-size companies bespoke services that were once only available to Big Pharma, the CRO said.
"We're big enough to step in and provide NeuroVive with virtually any service they require to develop and commercialize their compound, and we're flexible enough to align with whatever they need to achieve their objectives," President of inVentiv Health Europe Dan Feldman said in a statement. "Pharmaceutical companies face a far more challenging market environment than ever before. Today's market requires innovative strategic partnerships."
The top-heavy CRO space has only further consolidated over the past few years, in part because the largest players have come to see the value of working with emerging drug developers. Quintiles ($Q) shelled out for Novella Clinical last year in an effort to expand its services designed for small drugmakers, and KKR's mega-CRO includes CRI Lifetree, which makes its money assisting emerging companies.
For inVentiv, the changing market plays to its strengths, Feldman said, as the Massachusetts CRO has grown to employ 12,000 people in more than 40 countries, going beyond clinical research and offering services like legal consulting, policy work and market access.
- read the statement