In 2016, Alliance Pharma had many notable achievements. One of the reasons that we continue to see growth year after year is the strong leadership of Dr. Feng (Frank) Li. For a second year in a row, Alliance Pharma was recognized with SmartCEO Future 50 award as Philadelphia region’s fastest growing mid-sized companies for 2017. From an increase in laboratory space and personnel to a host of new instruments, Alliance Pharma’s expansion facilitates an agile and adaptive environment to meet the specialty research needs of our clients—some of the world's best pharmaceutical companies.
By opening the laboratory animal facility in April 2016, Alliance began to offer in-life dosing studies and created three vivarium technician jobs. We also added critical research space for light-sensitive compounds. Nearby, a new temperature and humidity control unit upgraded our archive room storage capabilities. A few months ago, a crane arrived to deliver an AC unit for the new large-molecule mass spectrometry laboratory. In addition to space enhancements, we also added several new pieces of equipment.
Brand New Equipment Purchased in 2016
- Thermo Scientific Q Exactive Plus High-Resolution Mass Spectrometer
- Another Hamilton Robotics Automated Liquid Handling System
- Another Meso Sector Imager S600 Microplate Reader
- Three additional High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) systems
- Five additional laboratory freezers
- Beckman Coulter AU480 Chemistry Analyzer
System Formalization
As part of our commitment to continuous improvement in service, we updated our quality manual and disaster recovery plan.
A new software system was implemented to facilitate project management for each department. We also implemented a secure, digital sample management system to easily track data about storage and shipments. Laboratory operations has made improvements in the instrument inventory system, chemical and solvent inventory system, reagent inventory system, and HPLC column tracking system. Also, we have partnered with excellent providers to streamline our accounting and human resources systems.
Finally, a Training Coordinator was appointed to improve our on-boarding process for new employees and to identify areas for staff training and development. Since our company grew by over 50%, this was a much-needed organizational structure.
New Hire Spotlights
Our workforce grew to a total employee count of 63 in 2016. You can check out some of our staff announcements on our LinkedIn page. Our leadership team additions this year include Dr. Weiqing Chen, Dr. Wei Lu, and Dr. Colin Barry.
Notable Achievements in Social Media
On December 29th, we relaunched our site with Hubspot to deliver innovative and helpful content about the pharmaceutical research industry.
We gained our 100th Twitter follower on December 15. Thank you @ArcturusRX!
Eight team members worked together to create our first social media video, the #mannequinchallenge.
Over 1000 people saw our October 19 LinkedIn update.
Check us out on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or on our blog to read more about this year’s highlights.
Future Direction
Our promise for 2017 is to continue to strengthen our specialties. We will continue to emphasize quality, compliance, and skill training. It is important for us to continue to improve our operational efficiency. We plan to achieve new levels of productivity by further standardizing and harmonizing processes, and automating procedures, wherever possible. As always, we seek to deliver the highest quality data and in the most timely expectations.
