PAREXEL International Corp. has opened a new early phase unit in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The new unit provides an additional 40-plus beds, bringing PAREXEL’s global early phase capacity to more than 580 beds. In addition to conducting a variety of studies in healthy volunteers, the Port Elizabeth unit will focus on early phase studies in patients, from First in Man to Proof of Concept studies.

“Increasing the number of patients per site and reducing the overall number of sites in a study serves to decrease variability, improving study quality and reproducibility,” said Michelle Middle, MB ChB, corporate vice president and worldwide head of Early Phase, PAREXEL. “The opening of our early phase unit in Port Elizabeth represents PAREXEL’s further commitment to offering rapid recruitment solutions to our clients. Port Elizabeth joins our other early phase units, which are integrated and harmonized to handle complex global studies involving healthy volunteers and patient populations.”