Mayo Clinic Says Goodbye to clinical trial services in the US

This also means some folks will be losing jobs as well. The unit has been in place since 1991 and has provided information on over 1,000 trials. This is just one more sign of how the face of the pharmaceutical business is changing.

It is about one fifth the cost to run trials in countries such as India and China, thus economics is the driving force here, but current projects will run until completed. Recently in the news many big Pharma companies along with cutting jobs, have also written about their expanded interests and investments in clinical trials being conducted overseas as well, so now the Mayo Clinic joins the ranks of not be able to compete as well with current economic trends here in the US. BD

**The world-renowned Mayo Clinic has decided to shut down its Mayo Clinical Trial Services unit, saying it has been unable to compete in a marketplace shifting towards “low-cost, routine trials.”**

That decision comes just a few days after a Kalorama report cited patient recruitment problems in the US and Europe as a major factor driving outsourcing of clinical trials to emerging economies such as Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

In a statement, the Mayo Clinic said the clinical trials unit was no longer accepting new contracts and that 30 employees at the unit would lose their jobs straight away. It added that a further 27 workers would be let go in 2009, but said it was hopeful that many of those would find employment elsewhere within the Mayo Clinic group.

“This decision will allow Mayo to focus its efforts on its successful and growing clinical reference laboratory business, Mayo Medical Laboratories, which provides ... laboratory testing services to clients throughout the world,” it said.

http://www.outsourcing-pharma.com/Clinical-Development/Mayo-pulls-out-of-clinical-services

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