Arizona State University and Quintiles sign new drug development deal

Arizona's contribution to the accelerated development of new, safe and effective medicines to help treat suffering patients in the US and around the world, will become greater following the signing of new deal between Arizona State University and Quintiles (www.quintiles.com), a global integrated biopharmaceutical services company which is a leader in managing clinical research.

The Center for Healthcare Innovation & Clinical Trials (https://nursingandhealth.asu.edu/) at ASU – part of the College of Nursing & Health Innovation – is only the fifth organization in the world to become a global prime site partner for Quintiles.

Through Quintiles the Center will receive access to many more clinical research initiatives. In return, the Center will deploy its unique community-based model to recruit more physicians and nurse practitioners who can identify patients who are willing and eligible to participate in the research.

Access to patients to participate in clinical trials is one of the major barriers to bringing much needed safe and effective drugs to market faster and with less cost.

Linda Mottle, Director of the Center for Healthcare Innovation & Clinical Trials at ASU, noted that the clinical research market in Arizona lags other states with comparable population sizes and explained: "We believe our community-based model can substantially increase the clinical research market in Arizona."

Adam Chasse, Senior Director for Patient Access at Quintiles, added: "Access to patients is one of the toughest hurdles in working with our biopharmaceutical customers to accelerate outcomes and get better value from the drug development process.  This agreement with ASU will help our customers to meet study milestones more effectively by providing access to large groups of physicians, known as 'investigators,' who are interested in participating in clinical research and who treat large groups of patients."

The ASU center is the only one of Quintiles' five global prime sites that is a community-based, non-academic medical center. ASU's model, the Community Oriented Network to Enhance Clinical Trials and Research (CONECTR), will serve as the hub for placing, subcontracting, consulting and supporting multi-phased research studies within Arizona.

Ken Levin, Chief Executive Officer of Precision Trials and a member of the Center Advisory Board, sees CONECTR providing multiple benefits for community research organizations:  "By offering assistance and support to providers, CONECTR will increase the number of qualified investigators and sites conducting research in Arizona. The program aligns clinical research pipeline opportunities with local investigators by their capability."

Quintiles' other prime site partners are Kaiser Permanente in Southern California, the University of Pretoria in South Africa, Queen Mary's College in London, Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., and the University of Malaya in Malaysia.