Resolian broadens horizons and expertise with its expansion into China

13 November 2023

Resolian, formerly known as Alliance Pharma Inc. and Drug Development Solutions Ltd., excels at delivering specialized services in the analytical and bioanalytical space. Join CEO, Patrick Bennett, as he discusses the mission, vision, and values of the new name. Bennett provides a look into the strategy behind the company’s expansion into the Chinese market, describing the unique expertise housed within each of its four global laboratories, and how the company ensures synergy and harmonization between them.

This video was filmed at AAPS 2023 PharmSci 360.

Want the latest expert interviews, articles, webinars, virtual summits and more direct to your inbox? Become a SelectScience member for free today>>

SelectScience

Hi, I'm Patrick Bennett. I'm the CEO of Resolian and I'm based in Malvern in Pennsylvania. Our new name is Resolian and it took a lot of work to come up with that name, but we're really, really happy with it. There's several parts to that, right? It's tied to our mission, vision, and values. And what it means is we're resolute in executing our mission, vision, and values. We're resolved to solve complex problems with our clients.
And then the second part is lian and depending on the tone, used in Mandarin, it either means together or with integrity. It's also part of alliance, L-I-A-A-N. So there was a lot of thought that went into this and it's really critical for us to have a single name versus previous, we would have three different names. So now we're able to have a single name for the team to rally under as well as our clients and our vendors in the scientific community to know us as Resolian.
The key factors for us to move into China is that this was part of the original plan, to have a global company allowing clients to work in any region, because there are logistic issues, reasons why you want to work in one geography versus the other. So we picked four very strategic locations. There's the UK, the U.S., China, and Australia.
We have those four laboratories. Some of them have some various capabilities, but in general, all of them are very, very strong at both large molecule, small molecule, whether it's ligand binding or mass spectrometry. They're also very good at large molecule mass spectrometry biomarkers. We're now also migrating into cell and gene therapy in each of those laboratories, so there's a lot going on in each of them.
In terms of developing a synergy and the integration, there's three parts to that. The first part is the corporate. They're fully integrated, so finance, HR, IT, and quality. That's single uniform global management. The rest of it is harmonization, and that's an important word, because you do need to have geographic differences and allow those differences to come out, whether it's through policies or quality initiatives.
We have two different groups within our company. The first is AMS or analytical material sciences. That one focuses on GMP and materials, drug materials. The other is bioanalytical, and there we're working with biological samples. We have two groups within our analytical material sciences. Obviously, analytical.
That's where we're looking at leachables, extractables, impurities, nitrosamines, organics, inorganics, and a lot of that on the formulation and the drug product itself. Material science is more towards the material itself and the analysis of, let's call it, the characterization of the drug material. Our bioanalytical groups are very diverse, four different countries. All of them, as I mentioned earlier, are very strong in LC-MS, whether it's a large or small molecule, ligand binding, as well as immunogenicity, and biomarkers.
The China lab and some of the others have significant experience in lipid nanoparticles, complex formulations, and oligonucleotides, and we're expanding those capabilities globally. The other part that we're expanding into is growing our flow cytometry, our biomarkers, our PCR, and ELISpot for the cell and gene therapy space.
I think the real benefit for our clients, both existing and new clients, is that they'll be able to make a decision on where they want the method development to occur, where it may need to be transferred to. We'll manage that within our integrated process, and then they may want to be able to move that asset from one time to another based on their drug development, whether it's preclinical, first-in-man, or phase 1, phase 2, phase 3.
What's next for us is we acquired a lab in China, and the location was specific for us. We really liked the location. It's Chongqing, China. It's not the same as Shanghai or the Pudong, Shanghai, or Suzhou, where a lot of our competitors are because we don't have the same turnover. We're able to then develop staff and have a really good training program and retain people so that we have really good consistency in our operations.
Then the laboratory was founded by people that started off in the U.S., in the CRO in the U.S., and then they moved to Chongqing, China, and started this CRO. They have a really strong understanding of both the U.S. market as well as the Chinese market.