Drug-Research Firm to Open in Old Mill

By Deborah Shanahan, Omaha World-Herald, Neb.

Mar. 15–A company that contracts with pharmaceutical companies to help with drug research and development has leased 22,000 square feet in Omaha’s Old Mill area and plans to hire 50 professional staff members.

The new Qualia Clinical Services facility, set to open in May, will recruit healthy people for a wide range of clinical studies and have the capacity to house them for overnight stays. The facility at 10845 Harney St. will have 140 beds.

Qualia was acquired last fall by Holmes Herbs Inc. of Toronto, Canada, to enable it to compete in the growing field of contract drug research, said John Metcalfe, president of Holmes Herbs.

Increasingly, pharmaceutical companies are outsourcing clinical trials, or the stage of research after a drug has been proved fit for human testing.

The demand for drugs to serve an aging population, the number of new drugs in the pipeline and regulators seeking longer tests or trials with more participants all are leading to more contract testing.

One analyst says the outsourcing was a $4.1 billion business in 2005 and is expected to grow to more than $7 billion by 2009.

“This (Omaha) facility is at the forefront of our global clinical operations and will position us as a strong contender in the global drug development arena,” Dr. Sohail Khattak, Qualia president and CEO, said in a statement.

Metcalfe said the Holmes Biopharma division is doing a public offering on the Berlin Stock Exchange to raise funds for the clinical research venture. He said the company was looking for a U.S. site when it learned that someone else had done groundwork toward establishing an Omaha site for clinical studies and then lost his investors.

“This opportunity presented itself, and we got a kick-start,” Metcalfe said.

He said he first visited Omaha about two months ago.

“I saw the friendliness and the cleanliness and said, ‘Yeah, this is where we want to be,’” Metcalfe said. “Omaha doesn’t have the big-city influences. It’s a clean-living population.”

He said he doesn’t expect to have trouble recruiting the professional staff, which includes physicians, nurses, phlebotomists and study coordinators. “We have them calling us,” Metcalfe said.

Earlier this month, the company announced that Mark McDonald had been named executive director of the Omaha facility. McDonald has worked for Covance and MDS Pharma Services, which has a 232-bed clinical-testing facility in Lincoln, and, most recently, was director of the Clinical Pharmacology Center at PRA International.

As for recruiting test participants, Metcalfe said a call center will be set up to accept calls from people willing to submit to tests that can last for a weekend or a month. Call center workers also will make cold calls to individuals and groups.

Volunteers are compensated for their time, and clinical trials often attract college students for that reason, Metcalfe said. He estimated that only about 25 percent of those interested are accepted because they have to be healthy — using drugs and smoking are forbidden — to avoid hurting the outcome of the tests.

Dan Kavanaugh, the Lund Co. broker who represented Qualia in its five-year lease, estimated that demolition and remodeling of the Old Mill building, which had been vacant for about six months, would cost more than $250,000.

Metcalfe said the medical equipment, furnishings and computers are being acquired, and he expects the facility to be fully operational by May 1.

“We plan to be good corporate citizens,” he said.

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