LabCorp Opens Clinical Trials Testing Facility In Belgium
Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings' (LabCorp; Burlington, NC) clinical trials testing business has opened a clinical trials testing facility in Mechelen, Belgium. The new laboratory will perform many of the tests offered by LabCorp in North America, including polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and flowcytometry, and will use the same methodologies and instrumentation to assure combinability of data.
The facility includes a central laboratory with international logistics and data management capabilities. "Using a single system setup and global database, we are able to set up a worldwide study once, assuring absolute method consistency and data combinability, which are of paramount importance to our customers," said said Scott Neilson, vice president and general manager of LabCorp's clinical trials business. "Other labs have to set up studies separately for each continent. This can be inefficient and costly and result in inconsistency and errors from repeatedly merging separate databases."
Through its relationship with Virco, a molecular biology company based in Belgium, LabCorp will support infectious disease drug development, offering exclusive HIV and hepatitis C phenotyping and genotyping. In addition, the company will support routine, esoteric, and specialty testing. LabCorp will batch and store analytical chemistry samples for shipment to the US.
Equipped with high-throughput instrumentation, the facility will provide full-service support for phase II–IV trials, including frozen specimen storage with a database for pinpointing the location of any specimen anywhere in the world. It will also provide fast turnaround in servicing phase I studies in Belgium and surrounding countries.
The new laboratory will meet the licensing and certification requirements of EN45001 accreditation issued by Beltest, Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) for human studies, the US Government's Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA), the College of American Pathologists (CAP), and ISO 9000 standards.
Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings is a clinical laboratory testing company, offering more than 2,000 routine tests and esoteric diagnostic procedures.
LabCorp's clinical trials business, based in Raritan, NJ, is a centralized laboratory supporting pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device clinical trials with safety and efficacy testing, method development, and analytical chemistry from drug discovery through phase IV clinical trials.
For more information, call Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings at 336-584-5171.