Advantar Labs Adds Operations Leadership - Joe Page, Ph.D.

March 3rd 2011 - SAN DIEGO - Advantar Labs, a contract laboratory provider of GLP & GMP Analytical and Formulation Development Services to Pharmaceutical, Biotech and Medical Device companies, is pleased to announce that Dr. Joe Page has joined the senior management team as VP of Operations.

"Joe is known in the Industry for both his analytical and formulation expertise across all dosage forms," said Dr. Rich Kenley. "He is truly a highly skilled individual who has built very effective teams over the years with the right scientific balance that enabled over 30 drug candidates to reach IND, late phase clinical or commercialization during his career."

"We are finding out from our customers that many of our larger competitors are being more reactionary instead of proactive. Moreover, they are not approaching analytical or formulation challenges as comprehensively or early enough with respect to the bigger picture, and assume that once a customer is in their shop, it will be too difficult for them to go elsewhere later" said Kenley. "We are successfully changing this paradigm with our customers, one project at a time and Joe's addition will help us to achieve this faster. For example, for many peptide drugs, we find that customers mistakenly think they have to go with a lyophilized formulation, but in reality many of these compounds have excellent stability in solution at 5°C, thus a customer could avoid expensive lyophilization development and manufacturing of their API downstream."
Page will lead the planning, expansion and overall management of Advantar's laboratory operations to ensure optimal use of analytical and people resources while adhering to regulatory compliance. Page brings nearly 20 years of analytical and formulation development experience to the company, 15 of which, he presided in senior lab management level roles for contact research laboratories within Catalent, Cardinal Health and formerly Magellan.

"I have had the fortune of working directly with many of the people in the lab now at Advantar over the course of my career," said Page. "From a management standpoint, the team has been able to implement many systems that help increase daily output and make it easy to scale, while reducing potential risks of unplanned deviations, ranging from streamlined notebook templates and efficient SOP's to the overall laboratory layout and instrumentation maintenance. I look forward to growing the team in step with our customers' needs."

Dr. Joe Page was previously Director, Product Formulation and Analytical Services with Catalent from 2007-2010 and Director of Pharmaceutical Analysis with Cardinal Health (formerly Magellan) from 1999-2007. From 1992 to 1999, Page held senior scientist roles with Alliance Pharma and Hybritech. Page earned his Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from University of Washington, Seattle and completed a Post-doc Fellowship in Protein Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD.

About Advantar Labs
Advantar, based in San Diego, CA is a contract testing laboratory and small-scale clinical packaging company specializing in Routine/Compendial Analysis, Methods Development/Validation, Pre-formulation/Formulation Development, Clinical Trial Supplies & Kitting and ICH Stability Studies for small and large molecule programs including generics, proprietary drugs, biocompatibles and medical devices ranging in phase from Pre-clincal through to Clinical I-IV and Commercial.

For additional information, visit http://www.advantarlabs.com or contact Brandon Griffin (858) 228-7788