AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) today officially opened its first US-based Clinical Pharmacology Unit (CPU) at the University of Pennsylvania Health Care System's Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The opening of this new CPU represents a significant investment in research capabilities in the Delaware Valley.
"The new facility will add significantly to our global capability to conduct important safety and tolerability studies that support our development of new medicines for patients," said Karen Gotting-Smith, Vice President of US Clinical Development. "The opening of the CPU comes six months after announcing a research collaboration agreement with The University of Pennsylvania designed to ultimately stimulate more rapid development of novel therapies to address unmet medical needs."
Specializing in the earliest studies in humans, a Clinical Pharmacology Unit is where the safety and toxicity of a medicine are closely studied, and where investigations into the relationship between drug dose and its actions are conducted. This information is crucial to understand before broader clinical studies are initiated.
Located at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, the staff at the AstraZeneca CPU facility will have the benefit of access to state-of-the-art Electrocardiology (ECG) collection systems, telemetry systems and electronic data capture systems - all of which will provide critical data for the early clinical trial process.
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