Quintiles opened a new office in Accra, Ghana to improve efficiency and expand capacity to monitor clinical studies in Western Sub-Saharan Africa. The new office will provide access to the surrounding West African countries, and will begin to facilitate monitoring of a large malaria vaccine study currently under way.

The Ghana office is based at the grounds of the University of Ghana at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research. Quintiles has entered a partner-site agreement and will work with professor Alex Nyarko, Ph.D., director of the institute and professor David Ofori-Adjei, a specialist physician with more than 30 years’ experience studying infectious diseases. As part of the agreement with the institute, Quintiles will provide training for new investigators across a range of therapeutic areas, as well as training for clinical research associates (CRAs).

“This expansion offers huge potential to reach patients in Sub-Saharan Africa, which has an estimated population of 760 million people,” said Gillian Corken, chief executive officer, Quintiles Africa. “Initially the focus will be on diseases such as malaria, TB and HIV. However, we anticipate that as the infrastructure and economies in Africa develop, like many other non-traditional regions before, it will play an increasingly important role in recruiting patients for many other therapeutic areas, such as oncology and cardiovascular.