Quintiles, and DaVita Clinical Research, a wholly-owned subsidiary of DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc., a leader in kidney care, has announced a global strategic alliance. The alliance combines DaVita's clinical care and expansive footprint of research sites with Quintiles' operational delivery and therapeutic expertise in clinical trials.

"Through this alliance with DaVita Clinical Research, we will have the power to provide biopharmaceutical customers with nephrology expertise and global delivery capabilities to truly advance clinical research," said Jeanne Hecht, senior vice president and global head, Site and Patient Networks at Quintiles. "Our aim is to align our processes to reduce cycle times and accelerate clinical trial execution. Moreover, we will be able to alleviate the burden on patients participating in renal disease trials by incorporating clinical research into clinical care."

DaVita Clinical Research brings to this alliance data-driven trial feasibility expertise, trial sites in Europe and Latin America, its deep clinical knowledge of renal patients as well as an established research infrastructure with DaVita dialysis facilities and 30 years' experience conducting clinical trials across therapeutic areas.

Through this strategic alliance, the two companies align to provide capabilities and solutions for overcoming these challenges to deliver end-to-end support for renal disease clinical trials. By leveraging Quintiles' protocol modeling and feasibility, in combination with DaVita's extensive patient understanding, biopharmaceutical customers will be able to take advantage of the combined assets of both companies to progress their clinical programs.

"This alliance allows novel approaches to clinical development and clinical trial execution specifically in site identification, participant enrollment and study design," said Amy Young, vice president and general manager of DaVita Clinical Research. "We are excited about the opportunities this affords our organizations to provide innovative solutions to the biopharmaceutical industry and the participants we serve."