To mark its 10th anniversary, Drug Discovery & Development magazine invited industry vendors to reflect on the history and made predictions about future of the industry. Featured here are verbatim comments from this company.

MDS Pharma Services

Headquarters 
King of Prussia, Pa.

Location(s)
About three dozen locations in more than two dozen countries: The Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa

Years in Drug Research 
35 Years

Web site 

About the company
MDS Pharma Services is committed to delivering quality services on time. We offer a full spectrum of resources to support the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries throughout the drug discovery and development process – from lead optimization, pre-IND research, early clinical research (bioequivalence, phases I-IIa) and bioanalysis through to global clinical development (phases IIb-IV), central lab and centralized cardiac services.

MDS Pharma Services is a business unit of MDS Inc. (TSX: MDS; NYSE: MDZ), a global life sciences company that provides market-leading products and services for the development of drugs and diagnosis and treatment of disease.

The company’s line of business as it was 10 years ago. Changes in life science/drug research that influenced business.
During the last 10 years, MDS Pharma Services has sharpened its strategic focus on its core business of providing drug discovery and development solutions to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. It has exited such non-core areas as small-batch drug manufacturing operations and soil- and water-testing services in order to concentrate on the growing pharmaceutical outsourcing arena.

Scientific challenges in the next 10 years.
William Wheeler, MD, FACC, Global Medical Director, Centralized Cardiac Services: Given the recurrent problem of unanticipated safety issues resulting in extensive patient exposure and post-marketing drug withdrawals, pre-marketing discovery of safety issues will be the major thrust of drug development.

Jean-Paul Briffaux, VP, Scientific Operations, Drug Safety Assessment: Urgent needs for new medications for age-related diseases including cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, and for emerging new diseases such as virus, parasites, nutrition/metabolic diseases.

J. Fred Pritchard, Ph.D., Vice President, Drug Development Development and Regulatory Service: Maintaining scientific teams long enough to produce meaningful work could be a challenge because new drugs and technologies can require several years of effort by highly skilled scientists and engineers before success is realized. Companies that can maintain a stable R&D workforce will have the best chance to succeed in the race for new products from emerging science.

Anita M. O'Connor, PhD, Senior Director Biopharmaceuticals, Development and Regulatory Services: Participant recruitment will continue to be challenging due to the enormous pipeline of drugs requiring testing in pediatric, geriatric, mixed race and gender populations, and special subpopulations of patients with the genetic predisposition to benefit from the drug.

Factor(s) that drove the development of technologies during the last 10 years and greatest area of growths.
Javier Revuelta, Head of Clinical Operations for Europe and Asia, Global Clinical Development: The widespread use of communication technologies--internet, mobile phones, etc.--has clearly simplified the management and execution of global clinical trials and the management of global teams by improving remote interaction and permitting access to investigators and patient populations in emerging countries that otherwise would have not been possible.

Briffaux: Factors have included increased focus on immunology & immunotoxicity, biotech products, cytokines used as therapeutic agents, human proteins as medications, and developmental and reproductive toxicology.

Pritchard: Increased sensitivity and versatility of analytical instruments such as LC/MS/MS enables improved methods for detecting drugs and metabolites in tissues and body fluids has changed some aspects of drug development. Also, the use of small doses of radiotracer combined with accelerator mass spectrometry has resulted in the emergence of microdose studies to expedite acquisition of human data.

O'Connor: The past ten years has given us a wave of new biologic drugs, necessitating the development of new preclinical models such as the cynomolgus monkey, and new tools for drug development such as flow cytometry, and drug and antibody assays.

Bold Prediction: Where will drug research technology be in 10 years?
Briffaux: DNA targets for new drugs; Use of genomics to define specific medications/dosages for individuals; Broad use of imaging; Therapeutic vaccines; Broad use of biomarkers including genomic/proteomic/metabonomic.

Pritchard: There will be a great advance in resolution of images using digital computing technology and the capability to export dense data to handheld instruments that medical staff, researchers and even patients can use at the bedside or in the office.

O'Connor: There will be biologic NMEs that target immune system pathways discovered in the past couple of years. The next wave of therapies will have multiple targets. We will see combinations of biopharmaceuticals used with traditional drugs, particularly for oncology patients. Therapeutic strategies will be personalized for patients based on their genetic make-up.