Bend Research Inc., a leading independent drug formulation development and manufacturing company, and Quotient Clinical, a business unit of Quotient Bioresearch (“Quotient"), a leading developer of compounds through clinical trials, announced today a nonexclusive collaboration that can speed the advance of compounds to clinical trials and expand options for drug delivery.

The collaboration combines Bend Research’s advanced drug formulation capabilities and Quotient’s clinical trial design service, RapidFACTTM. The result is a clinical trial program that will allow clients to screen and select optimized formulations rapidly during human testing. For example, optimum bioavailability-enhancing formulations relying on amorphous and nanocrystalline dispersions can be quickly identified using the highly flexible clinical trial designs pioneered by Quotient.

“This collaboration takes advantage of the proven strengths of our two companies,” said Bend Research President and CEO Rod Ray. “The versatility of designing and implementing clinical trials using RapidFACT provides our clients with a game-changing advantage in advancing their compounds.”

Mark Egerton, Managing Director of Quotient Clinical, agreed on the value of the collaboration. “Poorly soluble compounds are becoming ever more prevalent in the industry’s pipeline, and we have many customers who require formulation help to advance such problematic compounds. Access to Bend Research’s leading formulation expertise through this collaboration will provide our customers with reliable, rapid and efficient drug formulation platforms,” he said.

Accessing Bend Research formulations at Quotient’s clinical research site means that clinical studies can happen much more quickly than was previously possible. One client has already taken advantage of the collaboration with the successful transfer of a Bend Research formulation to Quotient’s cGMP manufacturing facility in Nottingham, U.K.

Ray and Egerton will be available for discussions at the upcoming American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) in November in New Orleans.