Novotech and PPC Announce Partnership

Novotech and PPC Group (PPC), two Asia-Pacific contract research organizations (CROs), have announced that they have formed a strategic partnership to meet growing demand for clinical trials in the region. The partnership creates the largest biotech specialist CRO platform in the Asia-Pacific, bringing together approximately 1,200 staff with significant scale and synergies across countries, research institutions, trial phases, therapeutic areas and functional specialties.

Novotech and PPC are majority owned by TPG Capital Asia and have already been working closely over the last two years collaborating on delivering biotech clinical trials in the region. Under the partnership, the companies will share an integrated governance structure as well as aligned systems and processes. The structure creates a scalable, regional platform, whereby both companies will continue to retain their own management teams, office locations and brands.

Globally, biotech clinical research activity has increased by 10 percent each year over the past few years. In the Asia region, the increase has been over 25 percent per year.

TPG Capital Asia’s Head of Australia and New Zealand, Joel Thickins, said of the partnership, “The combined group’s presence as the largest biotech specialist CRO in the Asia Pacific region presents significant growth opportunities and a greater ability to service a fast-growing market with attractive industry fundamentals.”

Novotech CEO Dr John Moller said, “Strengthening our relationship with PPC will allow us to provide a seamless service to our biotech clients, particularly with access to PPC’s more than 350 Clinical and Operations staff across 28 cities in mainland China.  Our increased scale will allow us to further invest in quality.  This is a good thing for our clients, for institutions and for patients.”

PPC Group CEO Michael Stibilj said, “PPC and Novotech have a strong record of working together. The complementary nature of Novotech’s position in the region and PPC’s particularly strong presence in mainland China, will be extremely attractive to current and future clients. Importantly, it positions us well to meet the significant and growing biotech demand in the Asia-Pacific market.”                                

Jason Zhu, PPC China, CEO added, “Biotech companies in China are significantly expanding their investment in Multi-Regional Clinical Trials to accelerate product development. They select PPC as we are an agile partner focused on providing strong medical and technical capabilities to enhance their development strategy. The strengthening of the partnership between PPC and Novotech will further expand our ability to offer our customers a flexible and effective clinical development solution.”