CDD Biomarker Centres of Excellence announced

The Centre for Drug Development is pleased to announce the successful conclusion of its tender for biomarker delivery for early phase clinical trial work.

The tender included both novel assay development and sample processing. The tender was the first of its kind to be issued to the ECMC network. Positive responses from across the network at the expression of interest stage indicated a strong willingness to consider a new way of working within academia.

Following a rigorous procurement exercise, CDD has appointed the following four sites as CDD Biomarker Centres of Excellence:

• Glasgow
• Newcastle
• Southampton
• UCL

These four sites will be CDD’s preferred suppliers for all early phase biomarker-related work. Each site will recruit one post-doctoral fellow and one research assistant. Posts are funded for a period of two years. It is anticipated that a service review will take place at that time and CDD may consider putting a new Expression of Interest call out for potential bidders.

Contracts have been signed with each site, agreeing to uniform Service Level Agreements and KPIs relating to service delivery. This will enable the sharing of best practices across the appointed sites and provide CDD and Cancer Research UK with a multi-channel yet uniformly high quality work.

We are greatly encouraged that each appointed CDD Biomarker Centre of Excellence has agreed to work closely with us to improve current provision on biomarker research and we are already seeing the positive effects of the service model laid out in the contract.

Congratulations to the all the appointed sites and teams.