Charles River Laboratories

Charles River was founded in 1947 by Henry Foster, a young veterinarian who purchased one thousand rat cages from a Virginia farm and set up a one-man laboratory in Boston, overlooking the Charles River. In an effort to fulfil the regional need for laboratory animal models, he bred, fed, and cared for the animals and personally delivered them to local researchers.

In 1955, the company's headquarters were relocated to their current home in Wilmington, Massachusetts.

The organization became an international entity in 1966 with the opening of a new animal production facility in France.

The first commercial, comprehensive genetic monitoring program was implemented by Charles River in 1981. Three years later, they were acquired by Bausch & Lomb. During this time, Henry and Jim Foster are still in charge of the company.

In 1988, the organization started to expand their portfolio to include the creation of transgenic mice and rats.

In the 1990s, Charles River expanded their portfolio further. They purchased Specific Pathogen Antigen Free Avian Services (SPAFAS) and serologic diagnostic services Merck, Sharp, and Dohme in 1992 and started offering in vitro endotoxin testing two years later.

Between 1996 and 2000, the company acquired Endosafe, Inc., was bought back from Bausch & Lomb by Jim Foster, acquired Sierra Biomedical, expanded its portfolio to offer biopharmaceutical services, and went public on the New York Stock Exchange.

Charles River launched the Humane Care Imperative in 2002, designed to raise awareness and train their employees on the importance of animal welfare. The same year, they were named "Company of the Year" by The Boston Globe. The company then introduced preconditioning services in 2005 to provide their customers with study-ready animals.

In 2008, Charles River signed a ten-year contract to partner with the National Cancer Institute and opened a facility in Frederick, Maryland.

From 2008-2013, Charles River acquires several companies including NewLab Bioquality AG, MIR Preclinical Services, Piedmont Research Center, LLC, Cerebricon, Ltd., Accugenix, and Vital River, allowing the company to expand their research models and services portfolio to drug development and discovery markets in China.

The acquisitions of Argenta and BioFocus in 2014 allowed Charles River to establish themselves as a full-service, early-stage contract research organization with integrated in vitro and in vivo capabilities from target discovery through pre-clinical development.

Today, Charles River has over 80 facilities, operates in 20 countries, and employs over 14,000 people worldwide. They offer support in the fields of basic research, drug discovery, safety and efficacy, clinical support, and manufacturing.

The company's broad portfolio allowed them to support the development of approximately 85% of FDA-approved drugs in 2018.[4]

In April 2019, Charles River announced it will be ceasing its San Diego-area operations, moving the work to one of its sites in Northern California.In California, the company also has sites in the town of Hollister and in South San Francisco. The work done in San Diego—the breeding of rodents that scientists use to test compounds—will be moved to Hollister, which is about 90 miles from San Francisco.[5]

In October 2003, Charles River Laboratories merged with Inveresk, a research company based in the United Kingdom. The company was known then as Charles River Laboratories. Inveresk specialised in clinical research and pre-clinical testing, and their main facilities are in Edinburgh, Scotland.[6] In late 2009, Charles River sold its Clinical Services Division in Edinburgh to Quotient Bioresearch.[7]

In 2010, Charles River Laboratories attempted to acquire WuXi PharmaTech, a China-based contract research organization, but the offer was withdrawn when the deal faced opposition from several large Charles River investors, including Relational Investors, JANA Partners, and Neuberger Berman. Proxy advisory firm RiskMetrics had also recommended that Charles River's shareholders vote against the proposed deal.[8]

In July 2015, the company announced it would acquire Celsis International for $212 million.[9]

In January 2016, the company announced it was set to acquire WIL Research for approximately $585 million in cash.[10] In June, the company announced it would acquire Blue Stream Laboratories.[11]

In August 2017, the business announced it would acquire Brains On-Line.[12]

In January 2018, the company announced it would acquire KWS BioTest for up to £18 million ($24.4 million).[13]In February of the same year, Charles River announced it would acquire MPI Research for approximately $800 million in cash.[14] The transaction was completed on April 3, 2018.[15]

In February 2019, the company announced it would acquire Citoxlab for €448 million in cash (approximately $500 million).[16] The transaction was completed on April 29.[17] In December of the same year the business announced it would acquire HemaCare for approximately $380 million in cash.[18][19]

The company has been the target of animal rights activists in the UK and US. It owned Shamrock Farm in England's West Sussex which closed in 2000 following a 15-month campaign by animal rights activists.[20][21]

In 2007, two monkeys at the company’s Sparks, Nevada, facility had their fingers amputated after they were caught in the wiring of their cages while being moved, and a third monkey suffered a cut to its tail.[22]

In 2008, 32 cynomolgus primates, also known as crab-eating macaques, died of overheating at the company's Sparks, Nevada, laboratory after a climate system failure. PETA filed a complaint with the USDA over the incident. The following year, a monkey died at the same facility after being left in their cage as it was going through a hot cage washer. Charles River was fined $14,500 for the two incidents. The company subsequently closed their Sparks facility.[22][23]

An undercover investigation in early 2019 by The Humane Society of the United States revealed that over 60,000 dogs had been used in experiments annually.[24] In April 2019, PETA organized protests outside Charles Rivers Laboratories to denounce poisoning and toxicity tests on monkeys, dogs and other animals.[25]

PETA owns $2,000 worth of shares in the company, enough to introduce formal resolutions regarding animal care during the company’s annual shareholder meeting.[26]

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