South Korea's Celltrion has recruited Medidata ($MDSO) to provide eClinical technology as it works to develop copycat versions of the world's top-selling biological treatments.
Under the agreement, Celltrion will make use of Medidata's cloud-based R&D software, with applications in data capture, coding, randomization and supply management, the companies said.
Celltrion won European approval last year for Remsima, a biosimilar of Johnson & Johnson's ($JNJ) Remicade, and is working with Pfizer's ($PFE) Hospira unit to push the injection around the world. Behind that, the company is developing versions of Roche's ($RHHBY) blockbuster treatments Herceptin and Rituxan.
That work involves multiregional clinical studies on thousands of patients, Celltrion said, generating terabytes of data that need to be sorted and prepared for regulatory agencies.
"Celltrion is researching the therapeutic impact of large and complex molecules, which, by their very nature, involve numerous complicated clinical trials," Vice President Sang-Joon Lee said in a statement. "This makes it even more important for us to have flexibility and simplicity in our research technology platforms. That is exactly what Medidata's cloud-based technology will provide."
- read the statement