QPS has been stringing together acquisitions over the past few years, and now it's adding Miami Research Associates to the fold, absorbing the company's Phase I unit and patient recruitment operation.
Sponsor demand motivated the buyout, QPS CEO Ben Chien told Outsourcing-Pharma, and Miami's 50-bed clinical unit can host first-in-man studies, which until now QPS could only do in the Netherlands.
The company isn't disclosing financial details but said that it will keep Miami's entire staff, allowing the business to run as usual but rolling all of its data management, modeling and IT into QPS' infrastructure.
The deal is QPS' fifth acquisition in just over two years, and the CRO has expanded its capabilities across the development spectrum. In September, QPS bought JSW, Austria's largest CRO, to bolster its Phase II-IV offerings. Before that, QPS snapped up India's Bioserve, the Netherlands' Xendo and Taiwan's Center of Toxicology and Preclinical Science.
Over the winter, QPS beefed up its Phase I capacity in the Netherlands and signed a deal with Japan's Intellim to launch a 50-50 joint venture, offering Phase II-IV services in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China.
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