A year after expansion in Pennsylvania, Altasciences scoops up CRO to spread to Midwest
Altasciences CEO Chris Perkin has gone through several acquisitions in his 45-year career. And if there’s one thing he learned, it’s how not to go through an acquisition.
His company put that knowledge to use on Tuesday when it announced that it had acquired competitor Sinclair research, a preclinical contract research organization in Missouri. With the pickup, Altasciences gains 80 animal rooms, and full-service IND and NDA-enabling toxicology and safety pharmacology services.
The company has been around for more than 50 years, and Perkin said that the move has felt more like meeting up with fellow colleagues than acquiring a new asset. Sinclair’s regulatory history is solid, he said, and it gives Altasciences more opportunities in the small molecule market, which can be often overlooked. That will allow for a range of different drug classes, and broaden the overall preclinical offerings.
“We’ve always been aware of Sinclair, I mean, that’s a competitor,” Perkin said. “When it came up for sale…we started talking with the owners, and we connected along a lot of levels. Similar culture, similar approach to customer service. It just gave us so much of a comfort level that they had already heard of us, it was just more like colleagues coming together than forming a new company.”
Perkin said that culture was the biggest priority for the team. If you meet the current employees where they already are, you can identify strategies and methods the team have in place. When you don’t have to change much, morale is kept high.
The location in Missouri also stood out to Altasciences, as it already boasts Washington state and Pennsylvania sites on either coast.
“It’s perfect because it fills a gap, but it’s only a couple of hours, at most from our campus with a clinical site, which always brings a lot of opportunities as we provide this integrated solution for drug development,” Perkin said.
The acquisition marks the eighth site under the Altasciences umbrella. Six of those have come through acquisitions, and three of those deals were made in 2021 alone. The company isn’t done either. The deal fits into its long-term growth plan, which is focused on expanding both organically and through acquisitions, and stretching its reach geographically. Most pressing is the company’s move to Europe, which is currently in the works. More concrete news on that front is expected to be released in the next five to six months, Perkin said.
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