Indian CRO Manipal AcuNova (Bangalore) and its German counterpart ECRON (Frankfurt) have signed a definitive merger agreement. The combined company, ECRON AcuNova, will have 265 employees. It will provide services for Phase I – IV clinical trials, including project management, clinical data management, biostatistics, medical writing, central laboratory and bio-availability/
ECRON founder Dr Klaus D Wiedey will become president, Europe, of ECRON AcuNova, and the Frankfurt office will be its European headquarters. Manipal AcuNova’s founder, vice-chairman and managing director, Mr D A Prasanna, will continue to lead global operations from Bangalore, and Dr Kohkan Shamsi will be the US CEO, based in Princeton, New Jersey.
Manipal AcuNova has research facilities in Bangalore, Mangalore and Manipal, and preferred access to Manipal Medical University’s 19 teaching hospitals. The university is Asia’s largest academic medical centre, with around 1,500 physicians treating some 1.5 million patients. Founded in 1985, ECRON, has direct operations in Germany, the Ukraine, Poland, Spain, the UK, Italy and the Czech Republic.
Dr Wiedey said that ECRON AcuNova’s clinical operations would be based on German practice and its data management on Indian practice, predicting harmonisation of standard operating procedures within six months. “Trial data can be analysed [by] biostatisticians and data management professionals from India, speeding up submission to regulators.”
