Cambridge, Mass.-based Veritas Medicine, a clinical trial services company, has discontinued its patient recruitment services and laid off a number of employees.
According to Veritas, it is restructuring the company to focus solely on its clinical trial disclosure business. The company’s clinical trial listing service and patient screening business will be terminated.
Veritas stated it ceased providing patient recruitment services on Feb. 8.
The company’s clinical trial listings service had been a major part of its business since its inception. One of its main patient recruitment services asked for potential subjects looking to enroll in trials to fill out medical and geographic information, which could then be matched with studies posted by sponsors. That service also contained a trial notification message to be sent to potential subjects via email.
“There have been reductions of staff who were directly related to the patient recruitment business, but the clinical data disclosure team is intact,” said Andrew O’Brien, Veritas’ president and chief executive officer, in a statement to CWWeekly.
The company is responding to the evolving landscape of the industry’s transparency requirements. That business consists of Veritas’ clinical trial registry system, its sponsor registry web site development and its patient response service.
“Historically, this has been a smaller part of our business, but it certainly is where we see the best growth prospects today,” said O’Brien.
The company’s web-based platform allows clients to post trial listings and results to different registries. Veritas’ web site development service helps its clients develop their own corporate registry sites in a branded environment.
“We’re focusing Veritas Medicine on the clinical data disclosure business because there is a terrific market opportunity and we are very well positioned there...the disclosure requirements for our biopharmaceutical customers are growing more complex,” said O’Brien.
In the last year, Veritas has been through some significant changes. After seven years as Veritas’ chief executive officer, Joe Avellone, M.D., left. In May 2007, Parexel, a Waltham, Mass.-based contract research organization, named Avellone to the position of corporate vice president of clinical research operations for both North and Latin America. Avellone remains on the company’s board of directors. He previously served as chief operating officer for BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts.
Veritas was founded in 1999 with an initial investment of $8 million from Burrill & Company, BioAsia’s Biotechnology Development Fund II, Cambridge Incubator and Seaflower Ventures. Three years after launch, Veritas had raised a total of $16 million in funding. Its current list of investors includes Burrill & Company, Vivo Cambridge Innovations, Seaflower Ventures and MDS Capital.
