Pharma Capsules

Expansions

Metrics Opens Facility Addition

Metrics (Greenville, NC), a contract pharmaceutical development laboratory, celebrated the grand opening of its $18-million, 47,000-ft² facility addition. The addition nearly doubles Metrics's space and allows the company to expand services to clients.

The facility addition includes four validated analytical laboratories, stability storage, a dedicated cytotoxic and potent-compound laboratory, and a new microbiology laboratory.

Metrics provides formulation, clinical trial material (Phase I–III), manufacturing, commercial manufacturing, and analytical development and validation services to the pharmaceutical industry.

Good Products Opens West-Coast Office

Good Products (Nottingham, UK), a leading provider of enterprise content management systems for the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries, opened a new US office to spur commercial growth. The facility in Irvine, California, will enable Good Products to support North American customers and introduce new products to the US market.

Patrick Hughes, former senior vice-president of sales and marketing at ClinPhone, will lead US growth from the Irvine office. This location allows Good Products to provide sales, support, and marketing to the small and mid-sized pharmaceutical and biotechnology organizations in Southern California.

Azopharma Boosts Manufacturing Capabilities

Azopharma Product Development Group (Hollywood, FL) will expand the manufacturing capabilities at its Hollywood and Miramar, Florida, sites with the addition of 17 new suites, bringing the company's total to 29. The manufacturing suites will increase Azopharma's ability to make material under sterile conditions and work with cytotoxic and potent compounds.

The new additions will include 11 suites compliant with good-manufacturing-practices, two cytotoxic suites, one sterile suite, one sterile cytotoxic suite, and two explosion-proof suites.

Agreements

Patheon Completes Facility Sale

Patheon (Mississauga, Canada), a global provider of drug-development and manufacturing services, completed the sale of its York Mills facility, located in Toronto, Canada, for $12.3 million. The completion was effective on Apr. 15, 2008.

The agreement to sell the facility is part of Patheon's global-network restructuring plan. Patheon is transferring commercial production and development services undertaken at its York Mills facility to its Whitby, Mississauga, and Cincinnati facilities. The transfer will improve capacity utilization and profitability at the continuing Canadian sites.

Patheon is decommissioning the York Mills facility and has leased it back for two years to facilitate this process.

BioProcess Technology Collaborates with L Biosciences

BioProcess Technology Consultants (Acton, MA), an international biopharmaceutical technical, strategic, and chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) regulatory consulting group, entered into a strategic alliance with L Biosciences of Copenhagen, to expand its CMC consulting services throughout Europe.

The two companies will jointly market their services worldwide. Clients will have access to all of both companies' technical, operations, and regulatory services.

Websites

Hovione Redesigns Website

Hovione (Loures, Portugal) launched its fully redesigned website, www.hovione.com, which provides in-depth and up-to-date information on the Hovione Group. The updated site reflects Hovione's organization into four business units: generics, exclusives, particle design, and inhalation. The new website also reflects the company's two new high-growth areas, which are particle design and inhalation-formulation services.

Hovione also develops and manufactures active pharmaceutical ingredients. The company specializes in complex chemistry and particle engineering.

Cognex Launches New Website

Cognex's (Natick, MA) new website, www.cognex.com, is designed to illustrate how manufacturers can use vision to optimize product quality and reduce manufacturing costs.

Cognexs new website.

The site includes more than 80 application case studies, selectable by industry and application, that show how customers benefit from Cognex's machine vision solution. One section of the site gives visitors options for learning more about vision technology through seminars, training programs, and tradeshows.

The website is easy to navigate and provides details about Cognex's products. Information for more than 35 countries is available in nine languages.

People

Egenix Appoints Scientific Advisor

Egenix (Millbrook, NY), named Daniel Petrylak chairman of the company's scientific advisory board. Petrylak is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, where he is director of genitourinary oncology.

Egenix is a privately held biotechnology company working to create effective cancer therapies. The company is working to develop small-molecule inhibitors of translation initiation, a new paradigm in target-specific, noncytotoxic anticancer therapy.