Q&A: Amid an M&A flur­ry at Charles Riv­er, long­time ex­ec Bir­git Gir­shick dis­cuss­es how Covid-19 has changed the game

Con­tract re­search and man­u­fac­tur­ing has been run­ning at a rapid clip amid the pan­dem­ic, and big play­ers in the space have looked to lever­age run­away cash flow to tur­bocharge their busi­ness. For CRO Charles Riv­er Lab­o­ra­to­ries, that means more of every­thing — in­clud­ing a big in­fu­sion in­to its man­u­fac­tur­ing arm.

In mid-May, the com­pa­ny paid $292.5 mil­lion for Vi­gene Bio­sciences and its 52,000 square feet of man­u­fac­tur­ing space in Rockville, MD. In Feb­ru­ary, the com­pa­ny bought Cog­nate and pledged to dou­ble ca­pac­i­ty in Mem­phis and Eu­rope. In ear­ly April, it teamed up with Va­lence Dis­cov­ery to ex­pand its AI plat­form for mol­e­c­u­lar prop­er­ty pre­dic­tion.

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