Worldwide Clinical Trials, a North Carolina-based CRO, is expanding its services with a new 15,000-square-foot large molecule laboratory at its Austin, Texas, location.
The addition will become part of the existing 42,000-square-foot Bioanalytical Center of Excellence in Austin that opened in June, bringing the lab to about 60,000-square-feet in size.
The “multi-million” dollar lab will help grow the CRO’s early-phase, large-molecule capabilities and services by helping meet expected demand for sample analysis scale of about 70,000 annually that is forecast to grow to about 200,000 by 2024, the company said. That forecast growth is across pharmacokinetics, anti-drug antibodies and biomarkers.
In addition to assay transfer and validation, the company’s scientific team also develops assays for popular large-molecule drug modalities like monoclonal antibodies, bispecific, antibody-drug conjugates and fusion proteins.
The global large-molecule bioanalytical testing services market was valued in 2020 at about $1.4 billion with forecasts calling for it to undergo a CAGR of 9.5% until 2026, Worldwide said.
“Our expanded capacity is vital to the development of large molecule products, such as vaccines, blood products, and gene and cellular therapies for patients,” Mike Mencer, executive vice president and general manager of Worldwide’s early-phase operations, said in a statement.
Back in January, Worldwide beefed up its services by partnering with Science 37, which specializes in supporting virtual trials. As part of that deal, Worldwide became part of Science 37’s CRO certified network that provides members access, training and commercial support in scaling up remote clinical trial operations.