🔒Improving clinical trials: Veristat’s first female CEO plans to double revenue, workforce

As an undergraduate, Kim Boericke watched as her mother battled a rare, aggressive form of cancer that sent her from experimental treatment to experimental treatment. While her mother is now in remission, she had to undergo two years of low-dose chemotherapy to get there. Seeing her mother navigate treatment sparked Boericke’s interest in clinical research. Originally, Boericke had planned on going to medical school, but she ended up switching directions to drug development. “I'm a builder and fixer by training,” she said. “Going into research allowed me an opportunity to still have a parallel path of being able to contribute to supporting research and development.” Boericke held leadership roles at research firms for more than 20 years before she was recruited to be the chief operating officer of Veristat in 2024. The Southborough-based clinical research organization provides support and outsourced clinical trials to companies in the process of drug development. In January, she was named the firm’s first female CEO in its 30-year history. Now, she is aiming to double the company’s revenue over the next several years and grow its global headcount from just under 400 to nearly 800.

“She's demonstrating now as the leader that she has a clear capacity to formulate and express a vision of where they're going,” said Veristat board member George McMillan. Veristat is one of the 50 biggest CROs in the world, according to the clinical research training organization CCRPS. Veristat generates eight figures in annual revenue but competes against much larger firms, such as the $15-billion IQVIA in North Carolina, the $5-billion PPD division of Thermo Fisher Scientific in North Carolina, and the $6-billion AppTec division of Chinese firm WuXi Biologics, which is building a $300-million facility in Worcester.

$2B to bring a drug to market

Coming to Veristat, Boericke was particularly interested in finding ways for clinical trial participants to have more flexibility in where and how they receive treatment. Boericke now looks to tackle major industry hurdles, including the strict criteria used to select patients, lengthy data processing times, and high costs. Boericke’s strategy combines trial optimization, artificial intelligence integration, and enhancing patient comfort to position Veristat as an international competitor in the $50-billion industry of outsourced clinical trials, said McMillan. Veristat’s search committee was looking for a CEO candidate who had experience and expertise in three key strengths: the ability to build relationships with pharmaceutical companies of all sizes, a deep understanding of clinical research, and the capability to effectively manage a company of professionals, McMillan said. “She was the best mix of those three,” he said. Boericke’s vision of Veristat’s future and its potential for expansion helped solidify the board’s decision to elevate her to the firm’s most-senior role. “Probably the most important ingredient if you're running a CRO of that size is your path to growth, having a clear view of where you want to take the company,” said McMillan. Central Massachusetts is an ideal location to accelerate that growth, as the region is growing its own drug discovery and therapeutic cluster, said Jon Weaver, president and CEO of Worcester-based incubator Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives.

The number of drug discovery companies moving into MBI in the last decade has grown exponentially, Weaver said. A couple of years ago, 65% of MBI’s startups were in drug discovery. That figure has dipped to about 45% today due to economic policy shifts, inflationary pressures, and the struggles to raise capital. On average, $2 billion is needed across 10 years to bring a drug to market, said Boericke. In Central Massachusetts specifically, money is flowing into the biotech industry, said Weaver, but it’s mainly allocated to later-stage companies, not the early-stage firms Veristat typically works with. “It takes a lot of investors with a lot of faith in the potential of the product to help get it along that long journey before they'll have their first product sale,” he said. With early-stage companies relying on investment capital for much of their first decade, that window presents a critical opportunity to reduce trial timelines and costs. Boericke intends to do just that, starting with clinical trial optimization.

Optimizing drug trials

Patient recruitment is one of the most challenging aspects of trials for drug developers, as clinical trials have strict eligibility criteria, said Boericke. She plans to harness the data Veristat collects to broaden criteria guidelines to include as many patients as possible while still producing clean outcomes. “You're trying to make your windows as large as possible so you can incorporate as many people as possible into the trial,” she said. Veristat then can shift more of its focus to patient experience. Veristat is pushing for more decentralized trials, using methods including remote monitoring, at-home nursing, and patient-reported outcomes to afford patients more flexibility while they participate in trials. In tandem with these goals, scaling services is a primary objective for Veristat, said McMillan, especially through automation. Boericke intends to use AI during the data processing period of clinical trials. Once the clinical data is received from doctors, labs, and imaging specialists, that information goes through data management and onto biostatisticians, who organize the information into data sets to be analyzed. Veristat is now giving those data sets and analytical specifications to AI to formulate tables, listings, and figures in order to compare outputs. “Decisions can be made in real time, rather than waiting several months for your output to come out and be able to see what happened on your trial,” said Boericke. Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the healthcare, manufacturing, and higher education industries.