ICON has signed an extension to its strategic agreement with Eli Lilly and Company to manage the company’s clinical data management outside the U.S. This extension means that ICON will now also manage Lilly’s needs in Japan in addition to those in Europe, Canada, Latin America, Australia and Asia, which was originally agreed to in November 2008.

Lilly also selected ICON to manage clinical trial site set up and monitoring in Europe for Lilly-managed studies in June 2009.

“Through our existing data management partnership, we have brought significant process efficiencies to Lilly in helping them progress their drug development pipeline. That Lilly has chosen ICON to manage this important business function in such a key region as Japan is a measure of our global data management expertise and our local capabilities in the region,” said Peter Gray, CEO at ICON.

Jeff Kasher, Lilly’s vice president and chief operating officer of Global Clinical Development, added, “With this transaction, Lilly Data Sciences and Solutions realizes its objective to leverage external, scalable clinical data management capabilities around the globe. We’re pleased to extend our relationship with ICON to include Japan, and their proven ability to reliably deliver work within differing cultural climates provided Lilly the opportunity to take another significant step in our ongoing agenda to increase flexibility, reduce fixed cost, and focus internal resources on core capabilities.”