A small Durham-based firm is aiming for further growth after being acquired by a global pharmaceutical services company.
Clinigen, a pharma services company based in the United Kingdom, announced in late November its acquisition of Drug Safety Navigator, a Triangle firm that helps pharma and biotech companies maintain patient safety.
Drug Safety Navigator, which has 16 employees, does not plan on changing its location following the deal, which President Molly James says enables the company to take the next step in its growth. The deal will help the company to move into additional geographic areas and expand its offerings for existing and new clients.
Clinigen says it has more than 1,000 employees across 15 countries and works with 32 of the top 50 pharma companies.
Financial terms of the deal were not released.
"Clinigen operates throughout the medicine lifecycle from clinical to commercial and currently has more than 500 pharma and biotech clients, and we feel this deal will enable us to accelerate some of our growth goals by utilizing Clinigen’s global capabilities and relationships to further the services we provide to our clients," James said in an email.
James joined Drug Safety Navigator in 2015, when the Durham company acquired Chapel Hill-based Five Oaks Pharm, which James founded.
While the deal offers Drug Safety Network the chance to grow as part of a global company, the transaction also adds pharmacovigilance capabilities to Clinigen's service offerings for its pharma and biotech clients. Pharmacovigilance refers to drug safety activities that include adverse event reporting and medical monitoring for drugs under clinical development and those already on the market. This area of drug safety is a large and growing market that is becoming increasingly relevant for pharma clients globally, James said.
For Clinigen, acquiring Drug Safety Network "represents an important step" in the company's expansion of its offerings to pharma and biotech companies, Clinigen CEO David Bryant said in a statement. It also provides the company with another "touchpoint to engage" with the company's clients along both the pre- and post-marketing phases of medicine development process.
"Drug Safety Navigator has built a formidable reputation providing pharmacovigilance services to its client base with whom it enjoys extremely strong relationships, and this acquisition provides an important entry into pharmacovigilance services, which Clinigen hopes to build out further,"
The deal follows Clinigen being acquired earlier this year by Triton, a private equity firm based in the United Kingdom, in a deal valued at nearly $1.8 billion, according to reporting from Reuters.
