Northview Biosciences Forms West Coast Incubator 

Northview Biosciences Forms West Coast Incubator for Drug Development Services 

Hercules, CA-Northview Biosciences announces a novel collaboration of companies providing drug development support services, conveniently co-located in its new West Coast facility. Bay Bioanalytical (BBL), HTD Biosystems, and Murigenics are now set up in Northview Pacific's 32,000 square foot lab/vivarium in Hercules, CA, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the country's largest biopharm market. 

Northview Pacific Labs (NVP) specializes in preclinical toxicology services including pharmacokinetic studies, regulatory toxicology, animal model development (including tumor and efficacy models), drug potency assays, in vitro toxicology, clinical chemistry, surgical models and drug/device combinations. "Our colleague companies beautifully complement Northview's toxicology services, giving our pharm and biopharm clients a broad range of technical capabilities," said Gurpreet Ratra, Ph.D., Toxicology Manager for NVP. "The whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts," he continued, "because the four companies can collaborate on study protocols, GMP/GLP compliance, and hassle-free sample transport, all to the benefit of our clients." 

Bay Bioanalytical is a contract analytical lab serving the West Coast drug development community. BBL has particular expertise in liquid chromatography. "Our clients are especially excited about our high throughput LC-MS/MS capabilities," said Robert Cunico, President of BBL. "We've just hired Eric Taylor formerly of Chiron's Analytics Group. His experience enhances our ability to collaborate on pharmacokinetic and toxicology studies, helping clients to quickly screen a large number of drug candidates."

HTD Biosystems helps drug development companies devise effective formulations and drug delivery systems. They specialize in high throughput systems and a rationale-based approach that can speed up formulation development time. Lead formulations can then be screened in animal models at NVP with bioanalytical support from BBL. 

Murigenics offers phenotyping and genetic analysis, which help pharm/biopharm companies evaluate gene targets. They provide pharmacology, surgical models, and breeding of specialty mouse strains. And they have expertise in CAT scans of mice along with DEXA x-ray capabilities for studying bone density. "We are thrilled with this development," said Tom Spalding, President of NVP. "It's a very creative collaboration that gives our clients large CRO capabilities combined with the responsive client service you expect from a smaller company. We now have a mid-market solution that combines technical and regulatory expertise with fast turnaround time and client-focused service." Of course, each company honors the confidentiality concerns of its own clients. "On collaborative studies, there is close cooperation among the senior scientists of the four companies," said Spalding. "But we each maintain our own strict confidentiality policy. We do have signed non-disclosure agreements with each other. And we interact only with specific approval of the client." 

NVP's Hercules facility is located within a 90-minute drive of the roughly 800 biomedical companies in the San Francisco-Sacramento corridor. It is only 1-2 hours by plane from drug development centers in San Diego, LA/Orange County, Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C. NVP is a Northview Biosciences company. For over 30 years, Northview Biosciences has been providing the health care products industry with responsive, reliable testing services. Northview is ISO 9002 certified and AAALAC accredited. Northview also has facilities in Northbrook, IL and Spartanburg, SC.

Contact: 

Carol Narup                      Tom Spalding
TheNarupGroup                Northview Pacific Laboratories, Inc.
847.784.9900                   510.964.9000

Narup@attglobal.net         tomspalding@northviewlabs.com