Pharmaceutical Product Development, LLC (PPD),a leading global contract research organization providing drug discovery, development, lifecycle management and laboratory services, has acquired Acurian, a Horsham, Pennsylvania-based leading full-service provider of clinical trial patient enrollment and retention solutions for the life sciences industry.

“As the biopharmaceutical industry continues to face increasing challenges with the time and cost of drug development, PPD is committed to bringing innovation to the clinical development process to deliver efficiencies for our customers,” David Simmons, chairman and chief executive officer of PPD, said. “Acurian’s best-in-class approach to patient recruitment will be an excellent complement to PPD’s clinical development expertise. Acurian will enable PPD to provide clients industry-leading services that accelerate patient enrollment and support their strategies for data-driven feasibility, site selection and enrollment delivery.”

Providing analytics-driven services to many large- and mid-sized pharmaceutical companies, Acurian manages the entire patient recruitment cycle, from recruitment to enrollment to retention. These services utilize innovative, proprietary and highly predictive software analytics to customize the most efficient and cost-effective approach to recruiting patients for a customer’s clinical trial.

Acurian will continue to operate under its own name as a separate business unit with its existing management team led by Rick Malcolm, who has served as Acurian’s chief executive officer since 2005.

“We are excited about the opportunity to become part of a leading global contract research organization,” Malcolm said. “Combining Acurian’s 15 years of experience in successfully innovating to meet the challenges of patient enrollment and retention with PPD’s full spectrum of drug development services will enable us to merge the expertise of both organizations and offer clients unique solutions for clinical trial feasibility studies and patient recruitment and retention.”