HORSHAM, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Acurian Inc., the leading full-service provider of global patient enrollment and retention solutions and a subsidiary of Pharmaceutical Product Development, LLC (PPD), announced today that Tom Privette, Ph.D., has joined the company as vice president and head of global business development. In this role, Privette will lead the commercial efforts of Acurian’s sales organization worldwide.
“Tom brings more than 20 years of extensive experience in pharmaceutical and biotech management as well as clinical research and development,” said Roger Smith, Acurian’s senior vice president and general manager. “His operational and strategic background will help drive our next stage of sales growth and global business expansion, particularly as we continue to deliver a wide range of patient-centric enrollment solutions that help trial sponsors achieve budget, time and quality certainty without having to over-hire research sites simply for access to patients.”
Privette was previously vice president and head of global business development for Syngene International, the largest global contract research and manufacturing organization based in India. He also has held senior business development and clinical research positions with another global contract research organization and pharmaceutical companies including Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and GlaxoSmithKline.
Privette earned his Ph.D. in cell biology/neuroscience from East Carolina University and bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
About Acurian
Acurian, a subsidiary of PPD, is the leading full-service provider of clinical trial patient enrollment and retention solutions for the life sciences industry. The company increases the enrollment performance of investigator sites worldwide by identifying, contacting, prescreening and referring people who live in the local community but are unknown to a research site. As a result, trial sponsors complete enrollment without incurring the unexpected expense of adding sites or time. Learn more at www.acurian.com.
About PPD
PPD is a leading global contract research organization providing comprehensive, integrated drug development, laboratory and lifecycle management services. Our clients and partners include pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, academic and government organizations. With offices in 47 countries and more than 19,000 professionals worldwide, PPD applies innovative technologies, therapeutic expertise and a firm commitment to quality to help clients and partners bend the cost and time curve of drug development to deliver life-changing therapies that improve health. For more information, visit www.ppdi.com.
Forward-looking Statement
Any statements made in this news release that are not statements of historical fact, including statements about Acurian personnel and services, are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. These statements often include words such as “anticipate,” “expect,” “suggests,” “plan,” “believe,” “intend,” “estimates,” “targets,” “projects,” “should,” “could,” “would,” “may,” “might,” “will,” “forecast” and other similar expressions. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are subject to and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and therefore you should not place undue reliance on them. Although PPD believes these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions at the time they are made, many factors are beyond PPD’s ability to control or predict and could affect the outcome of the subject matter of this news release and our actual financial results, and therefore the outcome and results might differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements.
Additional factors that might materially affect the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: our ability to recruit, retain and motivate key personnel; the competitive nature of the drug development services industry; changes in trends in the biopharmaceutical industry; rapid technological changes that make our services less competitive or obsolete; the impacts of political, economic and/or regulatory changes on the health care industry; the fact that our backlog may not accurately predict or convert into service revenue; the termination, delay or change in scope of our contracts; industry, customer or therapeutic concentration; the pricing of and cost management of customer contracts; information and communication systems failures; contractual failures; regulatory and ethical standards failures; our ability to attract investigators and enroll patients in clinical trials; violations of laws governing privacy, conduct of clinical trials and/or other pharmaceutical research; competition between existing and potential customers; management of business restructurings and acquisitions; risk relating to the performance of drug development services and our insurance coverages, if any, for such risks; U.S. or international economic, currency, political and other risks; changes in existing or interpretations of tax laws; factors impacting the value of our goodwill and intangible assets; and other factors.
PPD assumes no obligation and expressly disclaims any duty to revise or update any forward-looking statements, or make any new forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. PPD is not responsible for updating the information contained in this news release beyond the published date, or for changes made to this news release by wire services or internet service providers or any other party.
