ICON has signed a strategic partnership with Lilly to manage the company's clinical trial site setup and monitoring in Europe for managed studies. The agreement extends the companies' November 2008 partnership, under which ICON was selected to manage Lilly's clinical data management business outside of the U.S.

"Today's announcement marks another milestone in the successful partnership between ICON and Lilly," commented Peter Gray, chief executive officer at ICON. "We have worked together to create a truly flexible model that better meets Lilly's patient and portfolio needs and will also drive productivity within Lilly's clinical operations in Europe. We look forward to continuing to assist Lilly with its transformation initiatives and to delivering the quality services that will expedite their drug development pipelines."

"We are constantly evaluating how we can do things better to increase our flexibility and focus our internal efforts on our core capabilities," commented Jeff Kasher, vice president and chief operating officer of Global Clinical Development at Lilly. "This strategic agreement enables us to leverage ICON's significant expertise in clinical trial monitoring and site management in Europe and will increase our ability to speed innovative medicines to patients."