MBO agreed for Pharmaceutical Profiles

Simon Lee and Nigel Souster, the company's present management team, initiated the management buy out. Two new members have joined the group board: Edwin Moses, as executive chairman, and Angus Bell as acting CEO.

Founders Ian Wilding and Bob Davis will continue to work with the company, with Wilding remaining involved in client management and Davis chairing a new scientific advisory board.

Pharmaceutical Profiles​ is a Phase 0/I contract research organisation, which offers services that help select the right molecules and deselect the wrong ones in early drug development.

The company provides human microdosing (Phase 0) studies, medical imaging techniques, such as 2D gamma scintigraphy and 3D SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) and Enterion capsule studies that establish development strategy for compounds with complex oral biopharmaceutical properties.

It also provide human drug absorption (HDA) studies that determine the complex oral biopharmaceutical properties of new molecular entities.

These studies provide a 'route map' to later phase clinical development by demonstrating whether a product is suitable for oral delivery, if it will require "enabling technologies" to keep it in development or if it is a poor drug candidate where further development should be stopped.

Commenting on the deal, Dr Wilding said he thought that the next stage of growth at Pharmaceutical Profiles required a different approach to management.

Pharmaceutical Profiles' chief operating officer Lee said that the deal has been concluded that allowed the company to retain expertise and also bring in new management with sector and commercial expertise.

Around 40 per cent of drug candidates fail to progress beyond phase I and these failures can be attributed mainly to inappropriate human pharmacokinetic (PK) and ADME (absorption, deposition, metabolism and excretion) properties

The company's management change aims to double its turnover to £20 million (€28.7 million), an objective that market research suggests is achievable in the outsourcing sector. Indeed, Pharmaceutical Profiles' growth in the market reflects a trend favouring outsourcing of discovery research, clinical trials and formulation manufacturing, providing pressure relief from consistent, high-growth financial returns faced by the majority of pharma companies.

According to market researchers, Cambridge Healthtech Advisors (CHA), 54 per cent of large pharma companies (revenues with more than $3 billion (€2 billion) will outsource at least 20 per cent of ADMET in 2003, growing to 94 per cent of companies in 2008.

In outsourcing R&D the opportunity cost of not applying the money to another developmental project, accounts for nearly 50 per cent (€325 million) of the total cost of drug development. As a result, a reduction of each dollar in clinical development cost results in twice that amount in total opportunity cost reduction.

CHA cites a 25 per cent reduction in phase length can trim costs by $129 million. Shifting 10 per cent of Phase III failures to Phase I reduces total cost by $98 million.