PRA CRO opens new Phase I facility in Prague

PRA International, a leading Clinical Research Organization, announces the opening of a new Phase I facility in Prague, Czech Republic that will provide innovative "unit-on-demand" services and further enhance our capabilities for conducting early development trials.

Situated in a new state-of-the art medical building, the unit contains 10 beds and is designed for Phase I patient studies. The new Phase I unit is accredited and reinforces PRA's commitment to provide early phase services in the Czech Republic. This opening also enhances our ability to accommodate increasing client demand for Phase I trials in patient populations.

Like other PRA facilities in Central and Eastern Europe, the Czech unit will use our innovative unit-on-demand business model that brings a Phase I center to patients. This model establishes a Phase I study environment in central medical facilities that have access to the target patient population. Practicing physicians in these facilities can recruit high volumes of patients using extensive networks of referring specialists and general practitioners. The studies placed in this model occur both in single-center and in multinational, multi-center settings.

PRA Early Development Services is a diverse, international group helping pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers in their Phase I development programs. In addition to our five Central and Eastern Europe locations, PRA also has traditional-model clinical research units in The Netherlands and United States. PRA conducts more than 300 complex and bioanalytical studies every year, and has an active volunteer pool of 30,000 healthy subjects and access to a number of patient populations in specific therapeutic areas.