Strengthens PPD's comprehensive suite of feasibility, patient recruitment and retention services
WILMINGTON, N.C.--Pharmaceutical Product Development, LLC (PPD) today announced it has acquired Acurian, a leading full-service provider of clinical trial patient enrollment and retention solutions for the life sciences industry.
"As the biopharmaceutical industry continues to face increasing challenges with the time and cost of drug development, PPD is committed to bringing innovation to the clinical development process to deliver efficiencies for our customers," David Simmons, chairman and chief executive officer of PPD, said. "Acurian's best-in-class approach to patient recruitment will be an excellent complement to PPD's clinical development expertise. Acurian will enable PPD to provide clients industry-leading services that accelerate patient enrollment and support their strategies for data-driven feasibility, site selection and enrollment delivery."
Providing analytics-driven services to many large- and mid-sized pharmaceutical companies, Acurian manages the entire patient recruitment cycle, from recruitment to enrollment to retention. These services utilize innovative, proprietary and highly predictive software analytics to customize the most efficient and cost-effective approach to recruiting patients for a customer's clinical trial.
Acurian will continue to operate under its own name as a separate business unit with its existing management team led by Rick Malcolm, who has served as Acurian's chief executive officer since 2005.
"We are excited about the opportunity to become part of a leading global contract research organization," Malcolm said. "Combining Acurian's 15 years of experience in successfully innovating to meet the challenges of patient enrollment and retention with PPD's full spectrum of drug development services will enable us to merge the expertise of both organizations and offer clients unique solutions for clinical trial feasibility studies and patient recruitment and retention."
Based in Horsham, Pa., Acurian provides services globally.
About PPD
PPD is a leading global contract research organization providing drug discovery, development, lifecycle management and laboratory services. Our clients and partners include pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, academic and government organizations. With offices in 46 countries and more than 12,500 professionals worldwide, PPD applies innovative technologies, therapeutic expertise and a commitment to quality to help clients and partners accelerate the delivery of safe and effective therapeutics and maximize the returns on their R&D investments. For more information, visit www.ppdi.com.
Except for historical information, all of the statements, expectations and assumptions, including statements, expectations and assumptions about the acquisition of Acurian and its contribution to PPD, contained in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Although PPD attempts to be accurate in making these forward-looking statements, it is possible that future circumstances might differ from the assumptions on which such statements are based and could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Other important factors that could cause future results to differ materially include the following: the ability to attract, integrate and retain key personnel; competition in the outsourcing industry; rapid technological advances that make our services less competitive; risks associated with acquisitions and investments; PPD's ability to win new business; loss, delay or modification of large contracts; higher-than-expected cancellation rates; the rate of conversion of backlog into revenue; actual operating performance; economic conditions, research and development spending, and outsourcing trends in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and government-sponsored research sectors; overall global economic conditions; compliance with drug development regulations; changes in the regulation of the drug development process; consolidation in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries; risks associated with and dependence on strategic relationships; and the ability to control SG&A spending. PPD assumes no obligation and expressly disclaims any duty to update these forward-looking statements in the future, except as required by applicable law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing PPD's estimates or views as of any date subsequent to the date hereof.