Thermo Fisher Scientific’s PPD Business Gets NIH Contract for Neurological Device Development

Thermo Fisher Scientific’s PPD clinical research business, which is based in Wilmington, was awarded a five-year contract to provide regulatory affairs support and related services for the NIH’s Blueprint MedTech program. The new program will support development of translational neurological devices.

“The NIH’s Blueprint MedTech program is an important collaborative effort focusing on the development of neurotechnology solutions to diagnose and treat nervous system diseases, including psychiatric disorders,” said David M. Johnston, Ph.D., senior vice president and president, clinical research, Thermo Fisher Scientific. “With the scope of the challenge we face in neurological disease, the research that BPMT performs is vital to improving the outcomes of patients battling this group of diseases. We are privileged to support BPMT in those efforts.”

The BPMT program is a new incubator that involves multiple NIH institutes and centers in the goal of accelerating patient access to safe, effective medical devices for diagnosing or treating disorders involving the nervous system.

PPD, a contract research organization acquired by Thermo Fisher in 2021, has a 30-year history of providing clinical research services on a global scale across a broad range of therapeutic areas. This includes neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, rare neurological disorders, psychiatry, and neuroinflammatory and other disorders.

The PPD clinical research business will provide regulatory affairs services and resources to participating Blueprint MedTech grantees. This includes support of regulatory documentation and regulatory compliance for supporting medical device development projects from pre-clinical through clinical phases.

“PPD spawned the significant regional cluster of CROs here in Wilmington and continues to impact our community with significant projects such as the Blueprint MedTech program,” said Randall Johnson, executive director of the Southeastern Office of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. 

In the past five years, the PPD clinical research business has conducted more than 400 neuroscience studies and over 200 medical device projects that involved more than 60,000 patients at nearly 10,000 research sites around the world. The business also worked on 58 of the 187 neuroscience drugs approved globally over the past five years.

“We’re fortunate these companies and people thrive in our community, and we expect this industry to remain strong and continue growing in our region for decades to come, with dozens of companies now employing thousands of talented professionals who call the Wilmington area home,” said Johnson. “We’re poised at the NCBiotech Southeastern Office and as a community to help the company and its talented professionals continue to thrive in southeastern N.C.”

This project will be funded in whole with federal funds from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services.