Centient has performed a wide variety of projects for its life science clients, from business strategy to contract negotiation to product development. A few examples are:
Negotiated $100MM acquisition of private company by public company
Led negotiations for over 30 acquisition, licensing and services agreements for Genentech (see below)
Performed a market assessment for the National Marrow Donor Program (see below)
Defined the U.S. business strategy for an international genomics company
Developed a gene expression product distributed world wide by Beckman-Coulter (see below)
Led the national rollout of a clinical development program for Berkeley HeartLab
National Marrow Donor Program
Minneapolis, Minnesota www.marrow.org
Project:
Market Opportunity Assessment
Background:
The National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) is the world leader in the facilitation of unrelated marrow and blood stem cell transplantation. They have facilitated over 16,000 transplants for patients with blood disorders including leukemia and aplastic anemia and maintain a database on over 6 million donors, volunteers and patients, with DNA and HLA-typing information on over 3 million individuals. They also utilize their technology and expertise to support clinical trials, drug discovery and development and basic research of other organizations and companies.
Project
Description:
NMDP recognized that, since their founding in 1986, they had developed many valuable assets including its technology, database, scientific expertise and clinical trials ability. But they were unsure how best to apply these assets either for commercial or scientific benefit outside of NMDP. Centient Consulting was asked to study NMDP's assets and capabilities to determine which could be leveraged as new market opportunities or as opportunities to add scientific credibility to NMDP. Centient identified sixteen distinct opportunities, eight of which had sufficient potential to warrant further investigation, and three of which were considered high-potential opportunities. These results were presented to NMDP's Executive Committee, which resulted in the implementation of multiple opportunities identified by Centient.
Contracts Consulting Project
Genentech Inc.
South San Francisco, California www.gene.com
Project:
Partner/Suppler Selection and Contract Negotiations
Background:
Genentech is the world's leading biotechnology company, with several blockbuster therapies including Avastin™, Tarceva®, Rituxan® and Herceptin®. As an extremely high growth company, Genentech is rapidly expanding its GMP production capacity by building a the world's largest biologics plant in Vacaville, California and acquiring Biogen Idec's Oceanside, California facility. In support of these and other expansion activities, Centient has negotiated more than 30 large contracts associated with acquisitions, licensing, procurement and services.
Project
Description:
Projects 1 & 2: Genentech asked Centient to lead the partner selection and contract negotiation process for the acquisition and services associated with the upgrade of several of its critical internal systems. After completion of Phase 1 of this effort, Centient was asked back to negotiate the contracts associated with Phase 2 of the effort.
Project 3: Centient was asked to lead this cross-organizational project associated with the acquisition and construction of its expanded manufacturing facilities. Centient led the negotiations for acquisition, licensing and services, securing favorable pricing and terms.
Project 4: Centient was invited back for a fourth time to renegnotiate several prior licensing and services agreements (not negotiated by Centient) that had encountered difficulty during their term. Centient successfully renegotiated all affected contracts, increasing the partners' obligations while reducing Genentech's costs and commitment.
Althea is a leading provider of discovery, pre-clinical and clinical development services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. Their services include cGMP contract manufacturing of biologics and drugs, GLP testing, and a wide range of discovery services including gene expression using their proprietary eXpress Profiling™ (XP) systems.
Project
Description:
Althea was launching a new business focused on performing gene expression analysis utilizing a proprietary multiplex methodology originally developed, in part, by Dr. Frank Eeckman of Centient Consulting. Centient was asked to assist in the development of the associated systems and SOPs. Centient was ultimately responsible for developing three major applications for XP: 1) primer and multiplex design; 2) data analysis and visualization for the multiplexed gene expression output; and 3) a LIMS system to manage the capture and tracking of the assays.
Beckman Coulter has licensed the gene expression systems developed by Centient and Althea and incorporated them into its GenomeLab™ GeXP genetic analysis system, which is distributed worldwide. Beckman is expecting over $100 million in sales from its new equipment in the next five years.
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National Marrow Donor Program
Genentech Inc.
Althea Technologies, Inc.
Centient/Althea Paper on Multiplex Gene Expression