WILMINGTON, Del., Sept. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AstraZeneca today officially opened its first US-based Clinical Pharmacology Unit (CPU) at the University of Pennsylvania Health Care System's Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The opening of this new CPU represents a significant investment in research capabilities in the Delaware Valley.
"The new facility will add significantly to our global capability to conduct important safety and tolerability studies that support our development of new medicines for patients," said Karen Gotting-Smith, Vice President of US Clinical Development. "The opening of the CPU comes six months after announcing a research collaboration agreement with The University of Pennsylvania designed to ultimately stimulate more rapid development of novel therapies to address unmet medical needs."
Specializing in the earliest studies in humans, a Clinical Pharmacology Unit is where the safety and toxicity of a medicine are closely studied, and where investigations into the relationship between drug dose and its actions are conducted. This information is crucial to understand before broader clinical studies are initiated.
Located at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, the staff at the AstraZeneca CPU facility will have the benefit of access to state-of-the-art Electrocardiology (ECG) collection systems, telemetry systems and electronic data capture systems - all of which will provide critical data for the early clinical trial process.
Michele Volpe, Executive Director of Penn Presbyterian Medical Center said, "Penn Presbyterian is pleased to have AstraZeneca's Clinical Pharmacology Unit as a part of our campus. The work AstraZeneca scientists do here will make a significant contribution to the company's ability to develop new and innovative treatments for patients."
Alan Hollister, M.D., Ph.D., will serve as the head of the CPU. During his 15 years in academia, Dr. Hollister conducted National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored clinical research and taught medicine, pharmacology and clinical pharmacology, specializing in cardiovascular physiology and pharmacology. He is an internationally recognized expert in hypertension, autonomic dysfunction, and clinical pharmacology, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American Heart Association. Dr. Hollister was also voted into the "Best Doctors in America" for his clinical and diagnostic skills. During his 8 years of work in the pharmaceutical industry, he has designed, conducted, and analyzed numerous early phase clinical trials, and is particularly well known for his work in cardiac safety.
"Expanding the number of CPUs at AstraZeneca will yield a strategic advantage in medicine development for the company," said Dr. Hollister. "Internal units can be more flexible and have greater scientific capabilities to complement the work done by external Contract Research Organizations. These attributes will enhance the critical evaluation of new medicinal candidates and help us deliver new important medicines to patients," he said.
Globally, AstraZeneca has 5 CPUs and 1 ECG Center across Sweden, the U.K. and, now, the U.S.
About AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca is a major international healthcare business engaged in the research, development, manufacture and marketing of prescription pharmaceuticals and the supply of healthcare services. It is one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies with healthcare sales of $23.95 billion and leading positions in sales of gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, neuroscience, respiratory, oncology and infection products. In the United States, AstraZeneca is a $10.77 billion healthcare business with more than 12,000 employees. AstraZeneca is listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (Global) as well as the FTSE4Good Index.
For more information about AstraZeneca, please visit: http://www.astrazeneca-us.com.
AstraZenecaCONTACT: Abigail Baron, +1-302-885-3578, abigail.baron@astrazeneca.com, orEmily Denney, +1-302-885-3451, emily.denney@astrazeneca.com, both ofAstraZeneca
Web site: http://www.astrazeneca-us.com/
Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/985887.html /
