Roowin takes over old Schering-Plough plant, boosts small scale GMP services
The French CRO (contract research organisation) takes over the 1,500 sq metre premises from Merck & Co, which acquired it through its 2009 takeover of Schering-Plough.
The facility includes new liquid chromatography (LC) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology, as well as ultra-performance liquid chromatography, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry equipment.
Roowin is now also capable of synthesis services with temperatures below minus 80°C, through its new liquid nitrogen unit.
CEO Patrice Rool told Outsourcing-Pharma.com: “This will improve our capacity to elucidate structure of compounds, determination of impurities and develop a method with higher sensibility.”
Rool said the Roowin is one of the only companies to deal in small GMP (good manufacturing practice) batches because “industrial GMP companies have no interest in GMP batches of few grams and drug discovery companies are most often non GMP.
“For the industry, we can help them save time and money with the full CMC (chemical manufacturing controls) package integrated in one company rather than four to five suppliers. We also bridge the gap between research and development in industry and accelerate the development of the product.”
The company also say the move will strengthen its offering for early-stage research programmes, which combined with its new capabilities will allow for a bioanalysis service.
“The next step for the firm is first to consolidate these new services and to create a bioanalysis offer and to sign a partnership to add biology to our drug discovery service,” Rool added, before telling us this is just the next step before a foray into the rest of Europe as well as North America.
