Aus­tralia, 19 Feb­ru­ary 2026 –South­ern Star Re­search (SSR), a lead­ing Aus­tralian-based con­tract re­search or­ga­ni­za­tion (CRO), and Ex­pec­to Health Sci­ence, a Sin­ga­pore-head­quar­tered, Asia-fo­cused CRO, to­day an­nounced a strate­gic in­vest­ment-dri­ven part­ner­ship.

This part­ner­ship un­der­scores both com­pa­nies’ shared com­mit­ment to de­liv­er­ing best-in-class clin­i­cal re­search ser­vices and ex­pand­ing in­to high-val­ue glob­al mar­kets.

The ad­di­tion of Ex­pec­to Health Sci­ence to South­ern Star Re­search’s of­fer­ing will sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­tend SSR’s foot­print across Asia and the broad­er Asia-Pa­cif­ic re­gion. By lever­ag­ing Ex­pec­to’s ex­per­tise, net­works, and lat­er-phase ex­pe­ri­ence, the part­ner­ship will en­hance sup­port for spon­sors con­duct­ing stud­ies across di­verse mar­kets.

Un­der this uni­fied ap­proach, Ex­pec­to Health Sci­ence will ben­e­fit from South­ern Star Re­search’s ex­ten­sive ear­ly-phase ca­pa­bil­i­ties—an area in which both Aus­tralia and SSR are in­ter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized. In turn, Ex­pec­to’s glob­al clients will gain ac­cess to Aus­tralia’s ef­fi­cient, high-qual­i­ty clin­i­cal tri­al ecosys­tem.

The in­vest­ment will al­so en­able South­ern Star Re­search to “fol­low the mol­e­cule” in­to lat­er-phase stud­ies in Asia, where ac­cess to larg­er and more di­verse pa­tient pop­u­la­tions presents sig­nif­i­cant val­ue for spon­sors.

South­ern Star Re­search CEO, Lloyd Prescott, said:

“This is a step-change mo­ment for our two busi­ness­es, pro­vid­ing spon­sors with the ag­ile and fo­cused CRO part­ner they have been miss­ing in the Asia-Pa­cif­ic re­gion and fur­ther defin­ing our place in the glob­al CRO land­scape.

By align­ing our teams and ca­pa­bil­i­ties, we’re strength­en­ing our abil­i­ty to sup­port spon­sors through­out their de­vel­op­ment jour­ney while ex­pand­ing South­ern Star Re­search’s pres­ence across Asia and the Pa­cif­ic.

This in­vest­ment and part­ner­ship re­flect a strong strate­gic and cul­tur­al align­ment. Both busi­ness­es share the same core val­ues—sci­en­tif­ic rig­or, op­er­a­tional ex­cel­lence, and a fo­cus on ac­cel­er­at­ing clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.”

Ex­pec­to Health Sci­ence CEO, Pramod Kashid, added:

“We’ve iden­ti­fied a gen­uine part­ner in South­ern Star Re­search, and we’re ex­cit­ed about the jour­ney ahead and what it means for our clients and spon­sors.

South­ern Star Re­search has a strong rep­u­ta­tion for de­liv­er­ing high-qual­i­ty clin­i­cal tri­als across all mar­kets it op­er­ates in, with deep ther­a­peu­tic ex­per­tise and a spon­sor-cen­tric ap­proach.”

On man­age­ment con­ti­nu­ity and im­me­di­ate growth plans, Mr. Prescott said:

“We see this as a nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion from long-time col­lab­o­ra­tors to part­ners. Pramod and Dr. David Lloyd, our founder, for­mer CEO, and cur­rent board di­rec­tor, built busi­ness­es with sim­i­lar cul­tures and am­bi­tions. I’m look­ing for­ward to work­ing close­ly with Pramod and his team as we ac­cel­er­ate our growth.”

Fol­low­ing com­ple­tion, the com­bined en­ti­ty will em­ploy close to 200 staff across sev­en coun­tries, with sig­nif­i­cant growth in rev­enue and head­count ex­pect­ed through­out Asia over the next 12 months. The uni­fied or­ga­ni­za­tion will op­er­ate clin­i­cal teams across Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Sin­ga­pore, Malaysia, In­dia, South Ko­rea, Tai­wan, the Philip­pines, Thai­land, and In­done­sia.

The part­ner­ship will take ef­fect in Feb­ru­ary 2026. Clients and part­ners can ex­pect full con­ti­nu­ity of ser­vice, along with the added ben­e­fits of broad­er ex­per­tise, deep­er re­gion­al reach, and en­hanced end-to-end ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

Fur­ther up­dates will be shared as in­te­gra­tion pro­gress­es.

About South­ern Star Re­search: South­ern Star Re­search is a full-ser­vice clin­i­cal re­search or­ga­ni­za­tion head­quar­tered in Aus­tralia. The com­pa­ny guides biotech spon­sors through com­plex ear­ly-phase clin­i­cal tri­als glob­al­ly, with a fo­cus on qual­i­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and sci­en­tif­ic ex­cel­lence across a broad range of ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas and study phas­es.

About Ex­pec­to Health Sci­ence: Ex­pec­to Health Sci­ence is a Sin­ga­pore-head­quar­tered, Asia-fo­cused clin­i­cal re­search or­ga­ni­za­tion (CRO) sup­port­ing biotech com­pa­nies with end-to-end clin­i­cal tri­al ex­e­cu­tion across Asia, par­tic­u­lar­ly in emerg­ing and high-growth mar­kets.

To learn more about how in­te­grat­ed ear­ly- and late-phase CRO ca­pa­bil­i­ties can sup­port de­vel­op­ment across the Asia-Pa­cif­ic re­gion, vis­it South­ern Star Re­search.

Xenon Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal­s' lead drug great­ly re­duced the fre­quen­cy of seizures in a Phase 3 epilep­sy study, sup­port­ing the com­pa­ny's plans to file for FDA ap­proval in the third quar­ter.

The drug, aze­tukalner, would be Xenon's first com­mer­cial prod­uct since its found­ing in 1996. Wall Street an­a­lysts have high hopes for the oral treat­ment, fore­cast­ing over $1 bil­lion in sales by 2031, ac­cord­ing to es­ti­mates from Vis­i­ble Al­pha. Xenon's stock XENE soared more than 45% on Mon­day morn­ing, valu­ing the 370-em­ploy­ee com­pa­ny at about $4.9 bil­lion.

High and low dose lev­els of aze­tukalner both beat a place­bo group in re­duc­ing seizures, Xenon said in a state­ment Mon­day. The study ran­dom­ized 380 vol­un­teers with a com­mon type of epilep­sy known as fo­cal on­set seizures. The typ­i­cal par­tic­i­pant en­tered the study ex­pe­ri­enc­ing over a dozen seizures a month, de­spite be­ing on sev­er­al an­ti-seizure med­ica­tions.

There’s more than one way to fix a bro­ken gene, and a new start­up be­lieves that a tool for al­ter­ing large swaths of RNA code, rather than the un­der­ly­ing DNA, could be key to find­ing a ge­net­ic fix for tough neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions.

Af­ter work­ing in stealth for a few years, Tac­it Ther­a­peu­tics has raised $19 mil­lion to de­vel­op RNA edit­ing ther­a­pies, the com­pa­ny ex­clu­sive­ly told End­points News. The Bris­bane, CA-based start­up’s tech­nol­o­gy hi­jacks a process called RNA splic­ing to re­place mu­ta­tion-rid­den por­tions of mR­NA mol­e­cules with cor­rect­ed code.

“We just sort of sneak in and in­ter­cept that process for ther­a­peu­tic ef­fect,” co-founder and CEO David Nelles said. “You can re­pair big chunks of genes rather than lit­tle bits.”