Clinical research organization INC Research is boosting its ability to work with pharmaceutical companies as a partner in drug development with an acquisition that adds to its own consulting arm.
Raleigh, North Carolina-based INC Research announced Tuesday it has acquired AVOS Life Sciences, a North Carolina-based consulting firm. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Privately-held INC Research said that the new division, now called AVOS Consulting, will operate as an autonomous division within INC Research. The deal includes AVOS’ executive team, which now reports directly to company CEO James Ogle.
Neil MacAllister, president of AVOS Consulting and executive vice president of INC Research, said in a prepared statement that the marriage of AVOS and INC Research will help develop new approaches to drug development and commercialization efforts.
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“For example, we work with customers to reach proof of concept faster and at lower cost while carrying these efficiencies over to the later stages of clinical development,” he said.
AVOS also expands INC Research’s Alliance Partnerships unit that was set up last year. Alliance Partnerships was established to work with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies by creating alliances based on shared strategic goals rather than the traditional service level agreements. The industry’s larger CROs are increasingly moving toward these arrangements where the CRO is a partner to the sponsoring pharmaceutical company at various stages of the drug development and commercialization process. These arrangements open the CRO up to more of the risks of drug development, but they also give CROs a greater share of any resulting rewards of a successfully commercialized pharmaceutical product.
