ValiRx expands into services with biomarker business buy

By Nick Taylor

- Last updated on GMT

ValiRx expands into services with biomarker business buy

Related tags Contract research organization

UK-based biotech ValiRx has acquired a biomarkers business from Finnish preclinical CRO Pharmatest Services.

ValiRx has outsourced work to Pharmatest on and off for years, with a particular uptick in the past nine months, and has now brought the CRO’s (contract research organisation) biomarker unit in-house.

[The unit] fitted better with us than them​”, George Morris, chief operating officer at ValiRx, told Outsourcing-Pharma. Morris paraphrased American businessman Victor Kiam​ by saying “we liked them so much we bought the unit​”.

ValiRx is an innovator biotech but is committed to continuing to grow the contract services unit. The unit has annual revenues in the vicinity of the €75,000 ($96,000) acquisition price, Morris said. In the first half of 2011 ValiRx had sales of €418,000

As part of the deal a laboratory near the Arctic Circle and a few employees will transfer to ValiRx. In addition to continuing to offer contract services the unit will support development activities at ValiRx.

Biomarkers are crucial for detecting cancer at an early stage and they are also key in optimising therapeutic strategy and monitoring therapeutic success. It is a market that is rapidly growing in size with the potential benefit for patients being significant​”, Satu Vainikka, CEO of ValiRx, said.

Included in the deal are five families of patents, patent applications and related intellectual property (IP). ValiRx will pay Pharmatest royalties from future revenues relating to the IP for the life of the patents.

Nordic focus

The biomarker business will become part of ValiFinn, the Finnish subsidiary of ValiRx, and support in-house development of companion diagnostics to complement its therapeutics. ValiRx established its Finnish subsidiary in August 2011 to benefit from favourable clinical regulations in the Nordic region.

Advisors to ValiRx selected the Nordic region as being a good location for trials of VAL201, a hormone induced refractory prostate cancer treatment, and the Finnish government has given a grant up to €55,000 for regulatory and clinical work.

Late preclinical work also shifted to Finland, with Pharmatest performing “various tests​” ahead of VAL201 entering clinical trials. ValiRx also contracted Pharmatest for independent confirmatory work on the positive results of the VAL201 tests performed by the University of Oxford.

Having bought the biomarker unit ValiRx will continue to outsource other work to Pharmatest and is currently looking at a wider range of indications with the CRO. “They are very effective, very efficient and relatively cheap​”, Morris said.

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