Company Watch

Synchron acquires French bio-analytical facility

Our News Bureau - Delhi

Synchron Research Services recently announced the acquisition of a France based bio-analytical and bio-marker facility, Parexel. The CRO acquired the facility located in Poitiers in south of Paris for $6.7 million. The acquired laboratory will now be part of Synchron's international network of laboratories and will be known as Synexel Research International SAS. However, the staff of the Poitiers' laboratory will be retained by Synexel.

According to Dr Shivprakash Rathnam, Founder and Managing Director of Synchron, the acquisition of the bio-analytical lab will add more than 350 ready-to-run methods in various animal and human biological matrices to Synchon's kitty.

"Synchron's growth vision is to provide cutting edge technology coupled with industry needs. Our commitment towards our client's prosperity and growth drives us to bring world class capabilities to their door steps. Our global operations are aimed at providing our clients a variety of options and a complete package of services and to become their drug discovery and development partners," avers Rathnam.

While Synexel has already developed over 100 proprietary bio-analytical methods for New Chemical Entities (NCEs ) for world top pharmaceutical companies to assist in their drugs discovery programme for preclinical/phase I and phase II studies, the new acquisition will also bring cost effectiveness to Synchron's global clientele with the option of choosing locations based on the needs, discerns company sources.

At the same time, as part of a separate transaction Parexel also expanded its minority interest ownership in the clinical pharmacology business of Synchron. Under the agreement, the company increased its stake in Synchron to 31 percent. Earlier, the company had a stake of 19.5 percent in the Ahmedabad based CRO.

"Over the past several years, Parexel has developed a strong global clinical pharmacology capability, through both organic growth and acquisitions. As a result, we are an industry leader in expertise-based phase I studies. Parexel's increased investment in Synchron's clinical pharmacology business demonstrates our commitment to helping clients select the most promising compounds earlier by providing complex, multi-site phase I and proof of concept studies," said Josef H von Rickenbach, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Parexel International.

Synchron claims to have 90 percent clients from Europe and US and believes that the new facility will ensure international level clinical research capabilities and offerings to its clients. While the company plans to look for more opportunities in Europe in future for catering new areas of contract research with Indian synergy, apart from Europe, it has already started operations in other Asian countries, the first one being in Thailand. z