Clinical trials team set for exciting year

Mac Clinical Research, which has just won a Red Rose Award, is set for a big year ahead with a series of significant medical research projects.

The Faraday Way based company assists pharmaceuticals firms to carry out drug trials.

It started in 2002 with just two employees and now employs 160 with two sites in Blackpool, one in Leeds, Cannock and a new purpose built site in Manchester.

The Manchester site is part of the redevelopment of the former Royal Eye Hospital and features a new 56-bed hospital-based Neuroscience Centre of Excellence.

Mac is currently helping with work to find new treatments for Alzheimer’s, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis and atopic dermatitis but has helped with the development of many other drugs in those fields plus multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, anxiety, insomnia, schizophrenia and obesity. It has worked with 19 of the top 20 drug companies in the world in a global market worth $1.1 trillion last year.

The company was founded in 2002 by doctors who had been doing similar work in an NHS setting and achieved a turnover of just £25,000 in its first year. Now, having participated in more than 400 drug trials over the years, it is targeting a turnover of £22m within three years as its expansion continues.

It is aiming to get phase one accreditation for its new Manchester Neuroscience Centre of Excellence so that extensive trials can be carried out there and is looking to work with people on the Fylde with its current drug work.

And the company is recruiting up to seven science and psychology graduates a year to run its growing programme of work and regularly has people in on work experience.

Cathey Jepson, site director at Mac said the company’s success was built on reinvestment.

She said: “These are exciting times for us. Since we started we have pretty much doubled our turnover each year and we have been reinvesting almost everything we have into the business and the research.

“We work closely with GP practices here and we also run memory clinics open to the public at most of our sites.

“People in Blackpool who think they may be experiencing memory problems can come to us and talk to our doctors.”