Pharmaceutical giant Merck Serono and leading industry service provider Quintiles have formed a five-year clinical development partnership.

The unique collaboration aims to optimise productivity in the design and execution of clinical drug trials, speeding the development of new treatment options in Merck Serono’s core therapy areas: neurology, oncology and immunology.

Merck Serono will shape and lead the partnership’s drug development programme; Quintiles will direct the planning and conducting of clinical trials and contribute to ongoing trial design.

Quintiles will be the sole primary provider of Merck Serono’s outsourced drug development services. It will also participate in strategic decisions regarding the development of the pharma company’s portfolio.

The partnership reflects the pivotal role of contract research organisations and other service providers in the global pharmaceutical industry.

“By combining the strengths of Merck Serono and Quintiles, we are creating a new model in clinical development that will unlock the knowledge and insights of both companies,” said Annalisa Jenkins, Executive VP and Head of Global Development and Medical at Merck Serono.

“This is an innovative and unique collaboration that will help to translate the highest-quality science into efficiency and agility throughout our clinical trials, while enhancing our competitive position in an increasingly challenging environment of clinical drug development.”

Tom Pike (pictured), CEO of Quintiles, commented: “We view this as a key step forward not only for our two companies, but for the way the industry approaches the development of new therapies for the patients we ultimately serve.”

Merck Serono is the biopharmaceutical division of Merck, based in Darmstadt, Germany. Quintiles is the largest global provider of drug development and commercial outsourcing services to the pharmaceutical industry.

Merck Serono has launched its easypod Connect, which monitors injection data collected by the easypod auto-injector in patients receiving growth hormones, in Europe.

The medical software is designed to display patients’ injection history from the easypod electronic auto-injector on a secured online database.

Dr Annalisa Jenkins, Head of Global Drug Development and Medical at Merck Serono, said: “easypod Connect is a new approach enabling health care providers to monitor patients' adherence to growth hormone treatment, with the goal of better understanding its impact on treatment outcomes and more objectively adapting the treatment regimen to a single patient.”

easypod Connect provides healthcare professionals with reports and data from the patient’s injection history, which both monitors and analyses patients treatment adherence.

The easypod Connect Observational Study (ECOS) has already been in use since its launch at the end of 2010, offering the additional functionality to combine and manage injection patient records with growth and/or clinical outcome data.

Thomas Bols, Vice President of Corporate Health Policy and Market Access at Merck Serono, said: “By monitoring injections and thereby adherence to growth hormone, easypod Connect gives health care providers important information to consider when making decisions for their patients to improve treatment outcomes.”

easypod Connect has already been launched in Canada and Australia. The medical device has not been submitted for use in the US.