Demand for discovery services recovering, says Domainex
Outsourcing-Pharma spoke with CEO Eddy Littler who explained that while much of 2009 was a tough year for many contract research organisations (CRO) in the discovery services sector, demand began recovering towards the end of the year and has continued improving into 2010.
He suggested that while initially pharmaceutical industry mergers and acquisitions, downsizing and pressure to cut costs reduced the number of discovery projects, the loss of in-house discovery capacity coupled with the need to replenish dwindling product pipelines is increasing demand for outsourced discovery.
Littler also predicted that while services like candidate screening, medicinal chemistry and DMPK will continue to be required by the pharmaceutical industry, increasingly such companies will choose to outsource entire projects to contractors with specialist technology and expertise.
