C-Path growth outstrips current office space

August 17, 2006

By hammersmith

Just seven months after its grand opening at St. Philip’s Plaza in Tucson, the Critical Path Institute (C-Path) has tripled its work space to keep up with its growing staff and programs.

The leased 4,394-square-foot office suite is located across the street from the institute.

C-Path, a nonprofit partnership between University of Arizona, SRI International, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has recently grown to 18 people, with five more expected in the fall.

“Things have been going so well, we definitely had a space problem,” Larry Aldrich, C-Path’s chief operations officer, told Inside Tucson Business. “There’s been tremendous traction on our programs.”

C-Path’s earliest consortium, the Predictive Safety Testing Consortium, which creates biomarkers to predict health risks from pharmaceutical trials, has recently added five more companies as participants, creating the need for a director.

William Mattes, former senior scientific editor of toxicogenomics at Gene Logic and associate director of toxicogenomics at Pharmacia Corp., will come on board to co-direct the group with Jacky Vonderscher of pharmaceutical company Novartis, Mattes will also serve as C-Path’s director of toxicology.

C-Path’s projects are growing in tandem with its staff. Currently, the institute is working with University of Utah and University of San Francisco to identify biomarkers for people who react poorly to cardiac medicine. C-Path is also working to develop a bio-statistics and a pre-approval and post-approval safety network, as well as an educational program.

In addition, the institute is joining with Bashas’ United Drug, Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center, and UA’s Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics to create a first-of-its-kind active drug surveillance program. The pilot program compares the safety and efficacy of two commonly prescribed asthma medications to detect side effects from new medicines.

C-Path is also collaborating with the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation and UA to create a pair of Web-based registries for Niemann-Pick Type C disease and Valley Fever. The project aims to encourage the development of pharmaceuticals for rare and “orphan” diseases (disorders generally considered too unusual to justify drug development) by creating a new clinical trials system to identify patients who are most appropriate for clinical trials.

C-Path plans to relocate to UA’s proposed biosciences park when its current five-year lease expires.


For more information:

C-Path expands offices, staff and programs,” Inside Tucson Business, 07/24/2006

C-Path