St. Petersburg, Russia-based contract research organization (CRO) PSI recently acquired Buenos Aires, Argentina-based CRO Thywill. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

PSI has 800 full-time employees including Thywill staff, up 30% since the beginning of last year. The company has completed nearly 300 projects, 137 of which were oncology/hematology studies. PSI has 100 ongoing studies.

“PSI focuses the majority of its resources and logistical infrastructure in the regions and countries where it is possible to enroll a larger number of patients per site,” said Ginny Payeur, vice president, Global Sales, PSI. “With the recent acquisition of Thywill, a well-established Latin American CRO, PSI has expanded its coverage of the globe by entering another region with high-enrolling potential,” she said.

Thywill was founded in 2003 and brings clinical trial experience in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. When CenterWatch spoke with Thywill at the DIA Annual Meeting in 2006, the company had 30 employees and an undisclosed number of contractors. The company had 30 active projects.

The acquisition of Thywill represents PSI’s first acquisition since the company was established in 1995. Prior to the acquisition, PSI grew organically, establishing offices in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and the U.S.

“PSI’s pragmatic model is to recruit the majority of patients from Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America while managing key opinion leader sites in Western Europe and the U.S. Through experience with numerous global trials, PSI knows that high-enrolling regions contribute between 80 to 90% of patients in a large trial while the ROW [rest of world] contributes 10 to 20% of patients. PSI continues to grow in a way that supports today’s reality of clinical enrollment patterns,” said Payeur.

According to CenterWatch analysis, global clinical trial initiations in regions outside North America and Western Europe represent 15.8% of total initiations. Central and Eastern Europe and South America combined are 11%, with the remaining 4.8% occurring in Asia Pacific and the Middle East/Africa.

“From its primary Latin American office in Buenos Aires, PSI will expand offices in strategic countries and hire additional full-time staff and create the logistical infrastructure necessary to support major clinical trials in the region,” said Payeur.