Tandem Labs acquires PharmaKD to expand its services

Driving the move is Tandem's ambition to expand its existing services to a new level and offer its clients a more complete laboratory menu and a higher likelihood of success when investigating new chemicals entities, the firm said.

In recent years, new chemical entities approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have decreased mainly due to safety and toxicity issues. Nevertheless, the costs associated with developing and launching a drug to market have increased yearly.

By acquiring PharmaKD, the contract research organisation (CRO), which provides bioanalytical and immunoanalytical testing for the pharma industry, gains access to proprietary informatics that can reduce time and cost of drug development.

What PharmaKD brings to the deal is its DMDiscovery platform, a drug-metabolism technology that increases the productivity of drug metabolite identification and quantitation. Also coming to Tandem is the MarkerScan process, a biomarker discovery and screening process that identifies potential biomarkers.

"We have vigorously investigated new technologies and services that will allow our clients to safely and cost-effectively bring new medicines to market," said Denis Lin, CEO of Tandem Labs.

"PharmaKD has strong intellectual property portfolios that improve pharmaceutical research productivity, reduce costs, and increase the success rate of drug candidates."

PharmaKD provides novel PK/PD technologies to support pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. These technologies are used for predicting drug efficacy, drug toxicity and monitoring drug progression.

The newly formed facility, called Tandem Labs-New England, will bring the number of facilities owned by Tandem within the US to three.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but Tandem said it would retain key employees, intellectual property portfolios, scientific instruments and a 7,000 square-feet of operational space from PharmaKD.