Science in the Triangle

Quintiles Transnational scores drug research contracts that cover whole development areas, Stiefel Laboratories shutters operations in Florida and Georgia and consolidates efforts in Research Triangle Park and a symposium organized by RTI International exposes research gaps.

Quintiles scores kid and caboodle

Quintiles Transnational, a Durham company that helps drugmakers test and sell new medicines, has scored extensive contracts with British drugmaker AstraZeneca and Japanese drugmaker Eisai.

The AstraZeneca contract gives Quintiles responsibility for the majority of the drugmaker’s clinical pharmacology, which includes the composition of the new drugs and their side effects. The Eisai contract covers six experimental cancer drugs that the drugmaker wants to test on 11 tumors.

Drugmakers have long outsourced development of new drugs, but contracts with companies such as Quintiles used to be for just one drug or one clinical trials.

Quintiles is taking on whole programs to try to reduce the time it takes to bring new medicines to market.

Stiefel consolidates in RTP

Stiefel Laboratories, which was bought by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline for about $3 billion in cash, is closing its corporate headquarters in Coral Gables, Fla., and an operation in Duluth, Ga., to consolidate its business in Research Triangle Park.

Stiefel, which specializes in skin products, moved its research and development to RTP three years ago.

The consolidation following the deal with GSK will move a few Stiefel jobs from Florida and Georgia to RTP. But many of the 260 Stiefel employees in Florida and Georgia will be laid off.

Symposium identifies research gaps

RTI International organized its fourth symposium to identify areas that require more research. The RTI Fellows Symposium, which was held Monday and Tuesday at the University of North Carolina’s Friday Center in Chapel Hill, identified several areas lacking of scrutiny, including personal medicine, global warming and the role of biofuels.

Reports on some of the presentations:

• Genes as weather vanes for disease
• Global warming worries drive biofuels research

  Related to greenhouse gases, Amory Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colo., talked about his vision of lowering carbon dioxide emissions at Duke University Wednesday.