Contract research organization PPD said that while the pandemic is surging again across the world, lessons since March put the industry in a better position to keep trials going, as it says approvals for new vaccines haven’t and won’t lead to a letup in its COVID-19 trial work.
Speaking at the annual J.P. Morgan healthcare conference this week, PPD’s chief executive and chair David Simmons and chief financial officer Chris Scully said while the challenges of the pandemic are not going away anytime soon, the CRO industry is ready.
On a call with investors and analysts, Scully said: “The number of COVID cases has around the world risen in quarter four, and restrictions remain in place for many geographies. CROs and [trial] sites have learned a lot since the start of the year about how to conduct trials during this pandemic.
“This is not to say that things are fully back to normal; they are clearly not, but sites are better prepared to handle the rise in cases in quarter four than they were perhaps earlier in the year.”
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Simmons also said that when it comes to non-COVID-19 bookings picking up, and COVID-19 bookings going down, he didn’t see this as a “binary drop-offs and pickups”.
“If I take the COVID work (which includes the authorized mRNA vaccine from Moderna and the NIH), I think the COVID opportunity work is sustainable.”
He said that although many vaccines have now been given emergency or full approvals, including from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sinovac and others, there have been “no public cancellations” of vaccine tests, which “bears out the belief that the driver of need for more vaccine volume is there; and, now we’re seeing mutations in the virus, that’s another reason to believe that while there will be a drop-off at some point, I still think the work will be more durable and lasting than other people do.”