Rise of adaptive trials benefits small labs; PBI

28-Sep-2009 - Last updated on 29-Sep-2009 at 08:15 GMT

Increased use of adaptive clinical trials and biomarkers will benefit smaller laboratory services companies, according to Pacific Biometrics (PBI) that turned its operating income from loss to profit in fiscal 2009.

Budget cuts in the pharma industry have generally been detrimental to contract research organisations (CRO) but PBI believes the drive to improve operations, such as using adaptive trials and biomarkers, will be beneficial to some businesses.

Ron Helm, CEO of PBI, explained that adaptive clinical trials used in conjunction with biomarkers are completed quicker and spend less time in a company’s backlog. This favours smaller laboratories “that are nimble and flexible”, according to Helm.

These changes have increased the volume of work flowing through PBI’s laboratory and caused a shift in the balance between backlog and active contracts, with the former falling by 13 per cent to $13.1m (€8.9m) and the latter rising by 20 per cent to $25.1m.

In addition PBI’s revenues rose by 32 per cent to $10.8m, helping the company to overturn last year’s operating loss and post an income of $613,000. This growth was underpinned by demand for testing in the diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and clinical biomarker therapeutic fields.

Helm added that PBI has been able to achieve this growth because of business development initiatives it has made over the past two fiscal years. These have allowed PBI to grow despite ongoing consolidation in the pharma industry and limited availability of capital for biotechs.

Traditionally the majority of PBI’s contracts have been with pharma and biotechs but in fiscal 2009 revenues from large clinical trial laboratories rose as these organisations outsourced speciality testing services.

Furthermore, PBI’s biomarker business continued to expand, growing from five per cent of revenues in 2008 to eight per cent this year, and the company expects this trend to continue in 2010.