BioClinica, CCBR-SYNARC Merger

CCBR-SYNARC and BioClinica have solidified a merger, creating a global provider of outsourced clinical management services from centers throughout Asia, Europe and The Americas. The combined company will offer a portfolio of services for conducting and managing global clinical trials. Mark Weinstein, president and chief executive officer of BioClinica, will serve as chief executive officer.
           
BioClinica’s clinical trial imaging management solutions, along with its e-clinical business will be combined with CCBR-SYNARC’s medical image analysis and patient recruitment services, as well as biochemical-marker services for clinical trials. The combined company will offer medical imaging services across multiple therapeutic areas, a worldwide network of research centers dedicated to recruiting patients for global trials, provide technology and consulting services, monitor cardiac safety of compounds, as well as central lab services. Mr. Weinstein discuses the strategy behind merger, broadened capabilities, and entrance into new service areas.
 
Contract Pharma: What was the strategy behind the merger?
 
Mark Weinstein: The strategy makes a lot of sense. At BioClinica, the largest part of our business is medical image management, where we had put together CoreLab Partners last year with what we are doing at BioClinica, and merged that all under BioClinica. So, by putting this together, there was an imaging component of CCBR-SYNARC, so we are now two times the size of our nearest competitor in the imaging space. When I say imaging, what we do is the collection and independent analysis of medical images for clinical research. We were the dominant player but, now we’re two times the size any competitor.
 
CP: What are some of the services that you’ve added with the merger? 
 
MW: It brings in another area, which we have not been involved in, which is patient recruitment. We find it’s a good, growing area. So that comes under our umbrella, and we now have our imaging, we have the CCBR, which is the patient recruitment piece, we have our e-clinical business, which is growing very nicely, and we have a small blood lab business. We’ve really broadened the base of our business — all within clinical research.
 
CP: Is the merger designed to increase capabilities and/or geographic reach?
 
MW: It basically enriches the therapeutic areas. Individually, both companies touch on various therapeutics areas where medical imaging is used. For example, at BioClinica, oncology is a very large area for us, as well as cardiovascular. Whereas the largest areas for SYNARC’s side is musculoskeletal, where they were number one and we were number two, and then the neuroscience area, which entails all the work going on with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. In this space, they where they were number one and we were two or three. So once again, the merger strengthened all the therapeutic areas.
 
With geographic reach, we’ve always done studies on a global basis. At any point in time we’re managing about 600 studies, and of those probably about 60% are global. So global reach wasn’t an issue because we’ve been collecting data from all over the world for many years.
 
CP: In what areas will the combined company gain scale?
 
MW: One significant area is operational capacity. With large Phase III studies, for example, you find it’s a big logistics business as far as how you collect these images around the world, do the pre-analysis, the analysis, and then get the data back to the sponsors. With our increased capacity we can deal with more, larger studies with the same people we have, and get more efficient at that.
 
CP: Will the companies operate under a single business model or continue to operate separately?
 
MW: We will bring together the imaging components, whereas the patient recruitment business will maintain its own presence, as well as our e-clinical and blood lab. So if services are alike, they’ll be put together – which is the imaging component, whereas the others will be maintained as divisions and will operate separately.
 
And just to clarify, the services added under the merger is patient recruitment, which is a big component, and we acquired a small biomarker blood lab business. In addition to imaging, BioClinica was already in the e-clinical space, which was part of an acquisition we made in 2008. The merger makes a lot of sense, it’s a good marriage, and we’ll see if we can make it work!
 
The decision on a name change is still to be worked out over the next 45 days with integrations planning.