Quintiles’ towering headquarters adjacent to I-40 is not much more than a big thermometer’s distance from Biogen’s big drug manufacturing plant and facility in Research Triangle Park.
But physical neighbors are now a lot more closely alligned as business partners.
While neither company is talking about the financials involved in their five-year drug development partnership announced Thursday, the firms do say the agreement means the two companies will become much more entwined in business if not more neighborly.
“Our clinical trials are led out of our R&D organization in Cambridge, Mass. [where the company is based], so we don’t expect a direct interaction between Quintiles and our manufacturing operations in RTP,” Biogen spokesperson Steven Goldsmith told WRALTechWire.
“However,” he added, “this is a clear example of the strength of the Triangle’s expanding pharmaceutical industry, which we all benefit from.”
The Triangle certainly is a hot spot for clinical research organizations and life science service providers other than Quintiles.
And RTP’s biotech/pharmaceutical hubs is one of the nation’s largest.
Quintiles and Biogen have worked together in the past with Quintiles providing services.
Now, however, they are collaborators and partners.
“Quintiles has a team of employees who are dedicated to the Biogen Idec collaboration in an effort to create a truly seamless relationship where both companies mutually succeed,” Quintiles spokesperson Phil Bridges explained.
“We believe this announcement is a strong indication of a trend where companies want to focus on what they do best for the benefit of patients and healthcare in general. As a leader in the biopharmaceutical services industry, we are thrilled to be guiding this trend.”
One of the first questions triggered by such deals as this one is: What impact will it have on jobs?
Biogen plans no layoffs, Goldsmith said.
Bridges, meanwhile, wouldn’t commit to Quintiles adding people.
“What we can say is that this agreement will require strong coordination and expertise across both organizations,” he said, ”and we will both always need talented people to do so.”
