Open Orphan PLC Expansion of volunteer recruitment centres (2335M)
January 20 2021 - 2:00AM
UK Regulatory
TIDMORPH
RNS Number : 2335M
Open Orphan PLC
20 January 2021
Open Orphan plc
("Open Orphan" or the "Company")
Expansion of volunteer recruitment centres for human challenge
trials
Open Orphan plc (AIM: ORPH), a rapidly growing specialist
pharmaceutical services clinical research organisation (CRO) and
the world leader in vaccine and antiviral testing using human
challenge clinical trials, has opened two new volunteer recruitment
centres to screen potential trial volunteers, the first in East
London and a second in central Manchester. These new locations are
part of the Company's expansion of its human challenge study trials
launching in 2021.
The first new site is a repurposed former coffee shop at the
street level of Queen Mary BioEnterprise Innovation Centre ("QMB"),
which houses hVIVO's current 24-bedroom state-of-the-art quarantine
clinic in Whitechapel, East London. This is the first time a
branded volunteer recruitment centre has been situated at street
level whereby volunteers can walk straight in for screening. The
large, multi-use space has the capacity to provide substantially
more volunteer medical screening and processing with dedicated
private physical exam and consenting rooms, ample hot-desking space
and a refreshment area, as well as a dedicated reception area.
Importantly, this means the facility can now offer 520 volunteer
recruitment visit slots per week, with the intention that this will
increase over time. This new centre has processed its first
volunteers in recent weeks. Learn more about the screening process
at www.flucamp.com/what-is-screening/ .
The Company has opened another similar volunteer recruitment
facility in central Manchester, broadening its reach and reducing
travel time required by potential volunteers to attend the initial
visit at our London clinic. It will have an initial capacity for
more than 100 visits per week, but this will increase substantially
in the weeks that follow. The clinic is due to process its first
volunteers on 27 January.
Cathal Friel, Executive Chairman of Open Orphan plc commented:
"We are delighted to have had the opportunity to get access to
these new volunteer recruitment screening centres and to have them
fully operational so quickly. The current pandemic has forced many
businesses to close and we are able to provide another use for
these spaces not currently in use. These spaces presented an
opportunity for us to open street level volunteer recruitment
centres quickly and efficiently. The number of volunteers required
by hVIVO is increasing rapidly in line with the number of studies
the company is running, and these two additional centres will allow
us to increase our capacity substantially in the year ahead. Given
our extensive pipeline of upcoming contracted studies, we are also
continuing to explore additional quarantine facilities.
We are proud of our hard working and dedicated team for
transforming both of these sites in record time into volunteer
recruitment screening centres where we can efficiently process more
volunteers than ever before."
Interested in becoming a volunteer?
hVIVO recruits many of its volunteers for its challenge study
clinical trials through its dedicated volunteer recruitment
website, www.flucamp.com . hVIVO welcomes volunteers to take part
in our clinical trials under expertly supervised conditions, to
further medical research, and help us to take the understanding of
respiratory illnesses to a new level. Volunteers are central to the
work that we do; our studies focus on testing new treatments on
real people, in a safe, controlled, clinical environment.
Further details on all aspects of our volunteer programs
including testimonials from previous volunteers can be found at
www.flucamp.com .
If you are interested in being contacted and provided with
details about future COVID-19 human challenge study research,
please leave your contact details at www.UKCovidChallenge.com .
For further information please contact:
Open Orphan plc +353 (0) 1 644 0007
Cathal Friel, Executive Chairman
Arden Partners plc (Nominated Adviser
and Joint Broker) +44 (0) 20 7614 5900
John Llewellyn-Lloyd / Benjamin Cryer
/ Dan Gee-Summons
finnCap plc (Joint Broker) +44 (0) 20 7220 0500
Geoff Nash / James Thompson/ Richard
Chambers
Davy (Euronext Growth Adviser and Joint
Broker) +353 (0) 1 679 6363
Anthony Farrell
Walbrook PR (Financial PR & +44 (0)20 7933 8780 or openorphan@walbrookpr.com
IR)
+44 (0)7876 741 001 / +44
Anna Dunphy / Paul McManus (0)7980 541 893
About Open Orphan ( www.openorphan.com )
Open Orphan is a rapidly growing niche CRO pharmaceutical
services company which is a world leader in the testing of vaccines
and antivirals through the use of human challenge clinical trials.
Conducted from Europe's only 24-bedroom quarantine clinic with
onsite virology providing individually isolated rooms and connected
to our specialist laboratory facility. hVIVO's challenge studies
require healthy volunteers to take part, volunteers are recruited
through FluCamp, learn more at www.flucamp.com . The hVIVO facility
offers highly specialised virology and immunology laboratory
services to support pre-clinical and clinical respiratory drug,
antiviral, and vaccine discovery and development. Reliable
laboratory analysis underpinned by scientific expertise is
essential when processing and analysing clinical samples. Robust
quality processes support our team of scientists in the delivery of
submission ready data.
The Company has a leading portfolio of 8 viral challenge study
models which are: 2 FLU, 2 RSV, 1 HRV, 1 Asthma, 1 cough and 1 COPD
viral challenge models. As announced in early March, Open Orphan is
rapidly advancing a number of Coronavirus challenge study models
and expects to be helping many COVID-19 vaccine development
companies to test their vaccines. No other company in the world has
such a portfolio, with only two competitors globally having 1
challenge study model each. hVIVO also works with companies in the
UK and Ireland to provide COVID-19 testing to staff to protect
staff and customers from a workplace COVID-19 outbreak through its
COVID Clear offering.
Open Orphan comprises of two commercial specialist CRO services
businesses, hVIVO and Venn Life Sciences and is also building out a
valuable data platform business. hVIVO has built up one of the
world's largest databases of infectious disease progression data
and we are populating our Open Orphan Health Data platform with
this historical hVIVO data. In our clinical trials going forward,
we are also planning to collect data on volunteers via wearables
during clinical trials. Therefore, Open Orphan's data, which may
yield valuable digital biomarkers, could be one of the more
sought-after datasets by many of the large wearables /smart watch
wearables providers around the world. In June 2019, Open Orphan
acquired AIM-listed Venn Life Sciences Holdings plc in a reverse
take-over and in January 2020 it completed the merger with hVIVO
plc. Venn is an integrated drug development consultancy firm which
offers CMC (chemistry, manufacturing and controls), preclinical,
Phase I & II clinical trials design and execution. The merger
with hVIVO created a European full pharma services company
broadening the Company's customer base and with complementary
specialist CRO services, widened the range of the Company's service
offerings.
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