Edison Partners Exits Jersey City-Based TrialScope After Startup’s Acquisition by Informa
This week, Edison Partners, a venture capital firm located in Princeton, announced that it had exited TrialScope (Jersey City) with a 3X return on investment.
Edison has invested in nearly 50 New Jersey companies since its founding in 1986 as Edison Ventures. Current New Jersey-based investments include Northpass (Parsippany), Health Recovery Solutions (Hoboken) and Zelis Healthcare (Bedminster).
TrialScope, which offers clinical-trial-disclosure and transparency-management technologies, was acquired by Informa Pharma Intelligence in late 2020. London-based Informa, is an analytics and insights provider and consultancy for the biopharma industry that specializes in clinical trial intelligence. TrialScope had received a total of $17.6 million in funding from investors since 2014.
According to a blog post by Edison general partner Michael Kopelman, “When we first invested in global clinical trial transparency leader TrialScope in 2014, we were impressed with its software leadership in the clinical trials registration space, evidenced by very strong market share across global pharmaceutical companies.
“In partnership with our friends at NewSpring Capital, we funded a spinout of the business from Deloitte Analytics to enhance the technology platform and fortify the management team. Members of Edison Director Network Jeff Kozloff, former CEO of Edison portfolio Verilogue, and Jim Walker, former CEO of Octagon Solutions, both joined the company’s Board of Directors. In 2018, Kozloff took the helm as CEO.”
Kopelman said that Kozloff deserves a lot of credit for successfully transforming TrialScope. Kozloff brought in a new executive team, invested heavily in product, and energized the salesforce. Today, TrialScope’s integrated platform is now being used by 16 of the top 20 clinical trial sponsors in the world, and its customers are responsible for more than 40 percent of all industry trials on ClinicalTrials.gov.
TrialScope also broadened it scope under Kozloff’s leadership, Kopelman said. Kozloff “guided a strategy to broaden the company’s footprint beyond clinical trials operations/registration into patient engagement and recruitment. He led the acquisition of upstart Clinical Trial Connect, which connects trial recruiting companies with pharma sponsors. Early in 2020, the company launched TrialScope Connect, which supported the patient recruiting efforts for Moderna’s recent COVID vaccine.”
According to a TrialScope release issued in October 2020, Moderna enlisted the help of TrialScope for patient recruitment in order to fulfill a commitment to diversity and inclusion in its Phase 3 trials. Moderna utilized TrialScope Connect, a patient referral collective that connects sponsors and clinical trial recruitment partners so they can rapidly find, screen and enroll clinical trial participants.
In October 2020, Moderna completed the recruitment of more than 30,000 participants in the Phase 3 study of its COVID-19 Vaccine, utilizing TrialScope Connect’s platform during the final enrollment period to ensure the inclusion of participants from communities that have historically been underrepresented in clinical research and are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. The study included more than 11,000 participants from communities of color, reflecting U.S. demographics.
At the time, Kozloff said, “When we set out to build TrialScope Connect, we knew that the old way of recruiting for clinical trials wasn’t working, but we never knew our referral network would be instrumental in supporting enrollment in this important clinical trial. … While the coronavirus pandemic has proved a monumental challenge for people across the globe, Moderna is at the forefront of the fight, and we are thrilled to play a small but important supporting role.”
Kopelman agreed, noting that Edison was humbled “to play a small part in supporting the clinical trial for an approved COVID-19 vaccine.”
