Charles River Laboratories and Chiesi Farmaceutici SpA Announce Extension of Integrated Respiratory Drug Discovery Program

Charles River Laboratories International, Inc., a leading early-stage contract research organization (CRO), today announced that it has extended its longstanding, strategic, integrated drug discovery partnership with Chiesi Farmaceutici SpA in the field of respiratory disease.

“Over the past six years, our integrated respiratory program with Chiesi has been extremely productive,” said Birgit Girshick, Corporate Senior Vice President, Global Discovery at Charles River. “Together, our teams have generated a significant number of patents and development candidates, showing the true power of collaboration in driving safe and effective treatments to the clinic.”

Through their continued partnership, Charles River will provide Chiesi an extensive portfolio of integrated drug discovery capabilities, including medicinal chemistry, ADME/DMPK studies, pharmaceutics, in vitro assays, in vivo models, and safety pharmacology studies to help identify and test Chiesi’s promising candidates for preclinical development.

“Charles River has a long track record in conducting inhaled drug discovery and development studies,” said Dr. Mark Parry Billings, Corporate Drug Development Head, Chiesi Farmaceutici. “This, coupled with their expertise in end-to-end respiratory drug design, has made Charles River a strong partner for us in the field of respiratory research. We look forward to continuing our relationship with their team.”

Charles River and Chiesi have engaged in an ongoing program since 2011, with the latest extension paving the way for a durable continuation. In addition to their longstanding relationship with Chiesi, Charles River has been active in the respiratory research space for more than 16 years. In that time, Charles River’s scientists have been named as co-inventors on nearly 70 respiratory patents filed by their clients and produced 25 development candidates.