Covance Purchases Equity Stake in Caprion Proteomics
17 December 2008 - 8:01AM
PR Newswire (US)
- New Biomarker VP Appointed PRINCETON, N.J., Dec. 16
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Covance Inc. (NYSE: CVD), a leading
provider of drug development services, announced today that it has
purchased a minority equity stake in Caprion Proteomics, the
leading provider of proteomics-based services to the pharmaceutical
industry, to further enhance its biomarker service offerings to
clients. Pursuant to terms of the agreement, Covance will serve as
the exclusive contract research organization distributor of
Caprion's proteomic biomarker services. In addition, Caprion will
serve as Covance's exclusive proteomic discovery provider. Through
this alliance, Covance and Caprion will offer pharmaceutical and
biotechnology drug development customers a distinctive, innovative,
and integrated biomarker solution. Covance also announced today
that it has hired a new vice president to lead its Biomarker Team
and that it plans to establish a Biomarker Center of Excellence at
its Greenfield, Indiana campus. These strategic moves will enable
Covance to further capitalize on the emerging high-growth service
market in biomarker discovery, verification, validation, and
deployment across the drug development continuum -- from early
proof of concept through late-stage clinical trials and
post-marketing surveillance. Currently, pharmaceutical companies
are adopting biomarker strategies for the vast majority of new drug
candidates, and it is predicted that within the next ten years
biomarkers will be a standard aspect of drug development for any
novel candidate. In fact, the U.S. FDA's 2006 Critical Path
Initiative listed biomarkers as one of the two areas with the
greatest impact on modernizing drug development and approval. "We
are very pleased to be adding Caprion's solid scientific
capabilities and leading biomarker technology platform to Covance's
line up," said Deborah Tanner, Corporate Senior Vice President and
President of Covance Central Laboratory Services. "We expect that
our clients will have a keen interest in this additional capability
given Caprion's impressive track record of accelerating biomarker
validation for early drug safety and efficacy assessment." "We are
excited to join forces with Covance's market-leading central
laboratory and world-class scientific talent," said Martin LeBlanc,
President and CEO of Caprion. "Over the past five years, Caprion
has established a large pharmaceutical customer base through
employing our distinctive, best-in-class technology platform, which
we expect will be further adopted in the market as a result of our
alliance with Covance. Most importantly, we believe this alliance,
which combines Covance's leading research services platform with
Caprion's leading biomarker platform, will yield superior biomarker
solutions for our clients." Covance to establish Biomarker Center
of Excellence in Greenfield To further accelerate and support the
growth of its biomarker business, Covance plans to establish a
Biomarker Center of Excellence at its campus in Greenfield,
Indiana. Given the high need that exists in drug development for
both discovery and development biomarker capabilities, Covance's
Biomarker Center of Excellence will focus specifically on biomarker
testing and validation and leverage the discovery support services
of Caprion and of the services that already reside at Greenfield,
including in vivo preclinical safety and efficacy assessment, and a
variety of sophisticated preclinical imaging modalities. This
combined with Covance's extensive capabilities in first-in-human
trials, clinical Phase II proof-of-concept and pivotal Phase III
trials, post-marketing commitment, and Central Laboratory services,
Covance's clients now have access to the most comprehensive
integrated biomarker capabilities in the industry. New Biomarker VP
Leading Covance's biomarker business will be Thomas Turi, Ph.D.,
Covance's new Vice President of Biomarkers. In his new role, Dr.
Turi will be responsible for building Covance's Center of
Excellence for Biomarkers in Greenfield and leading Covance's
Biomarker Expert Team, a panel of top scientists representing
Covance's biomarker capabilities. Dr. Turi joins Covance with over
14 years of experience leading drug discovery projects ranging from
exploratory through early development programs. Prior to Covance,
Dr. Turi spent his career at Pfizer, where he held a broad array of
scientific leadership positions of increasing responsibility. Most
recently, Dr. Turi served as the Senior Director of Translational
Biomarkers and Mechanistic Biology at Pfizer's laboratories in
Groton, Connecticut. Dr. Turi completed his postdoctoral training
at Yale University's College of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut
and received his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of
Cincinnati College of Medicine. He holds dual B.S. degrees in
Biochemistry and Chemistry from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. "I am confident that the scientific, business,
and leadership experience of our new biomarker vice president, plus
the creation of our Biomarker Center of Excellence in Greenfield,
will allow us to accelerate the growth of our biomarker business,"
added Tanner. "We are confident that our biomarker expertise will
help our clients increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their
drug development programs in terms of speed, cost, and quality."
About Covance Covance, with headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey,
is one of the world's largest and most comprehensive drug
development services companies with annual revenues greater than
$1.5 billion, global operations in more than 20 countries, and more
than 9,300 employees worldwide. Information on Covance's products
and services, recent press releases, and SEC filings can be
obtained through its website at http://www.covance.com/. About
Caprion Proteomics, Inc. Caprion Proteomics is the leading provider
of proteomics based services to the pharmaceutical industry.
Caprion's proprietary proteomics discovery technology,
CellCarta(R), is a gel-free, label-free mass spectrometry platform
that enables a comprehensive, quantitative and robust measurement
of the protein expression differences across large sets of
biological samples. Caprion has been providing biomarker and target
identification services since 2002, performing more than 30
large-scale biomarker projects for pharmaceutical industry clients
such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Biogen
Idec, Daiichi-Sankyo, Mitsubishi-Tanabe, Wyeth, AstraZeneca, Merck,
Boehringer Ingelheim, ICOS, Bayer-Schering , EMD-Serono, Vertex,
DebioPharm and Transgene. Caprion also has been awarded two major
5-year Biodefense proteomics research contracts in infectious
disease with the NIH-NIAID, and was awarded the Frost &
Sullivan Biomarker Technology award in 2007. Caprion Proteomics, a
privately-held company, is majority owned by Great Point Partners,
LP. For more information, please visit: http://www.caprion.com/.
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results or changes in the Company's expectations. DATASOURCE:
Covance Inc. CONTACT: Media, +1-609-419-2060, or Investors
+1-609-452-4807, both of Covance Web Site: http://www.covance.com/
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