CROMSOURCE, the international contract research organisation (CRO) formed last April from the acquisition of Belgium’s MSOURCE by Verona, Italy-based CROM, has added early-phase capabilities to its range of services through an “innovative private-public deal” with Centro Ricerche Cliniche di Verona (CRC).
A clinical research unit set up as a state-owned organisation in Verona by the G B Rossi General Hospital, CRC has been conducting Phase I and proof-of-concept trials for the last seven years, sharing its facilities and equipment with both public and private organisations engaged in pharmacological research. The facility is now under joint state and CROMSOURCE ownership.
CRC’s early-phase facilities occupy around 800 sq m of the hospital’s eighth floor. According to CROMSOURCE, the unit’s staff have “extensive” international pharmaceutical experience and CRC is fully integrated with the local medical and scientific community, giving it access to “highly motivated, well-defined patient populations and disease groups for proof-of-concept studies”.
Dr Oriana Zerbini, chief executive officer of CROMSOURCE, said the company had wanted “for some time” to add early-phase capabilities to its service portfolio “and we have now found the perfect way to do so. With this collaboration CROMSOURCE truly becomes a full-service CRO, able to provide our customers our support from the earliest part of their clinical development programmes”.
