Charles River Laboratories has backed an American Heart Association (AHA) campaign, joining forces with the nonprofit on cardiovascular disease awareness, prevention and community health initiatives.
The company, which provides drug discovery and manufacturing services, is supporting the AHA’s “Heart of Boston” campaign. Through this, the nonprofit aims to improve health outcomes in Greater Boston. Charles River is based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, a town about 20 miles north of Boston. The company’s support for AHA aligns with its corporate citizenship strategy.
A 2025 AHA report illustrated the need for projects focused on improving health outcomes in Boston. The report supported the view that zip codes are better predictors of cardiovascular risk than DNA, with the AHA finding that life expectancy and cardiovascular health vary by neighborhood.
In Cambridge, 14% of adults have high blood pressure. Five miles away in Roxbury, meanwhile, 36.8% of people have high blood pressure. Heart disease affects 2.7% of people in Cambridge and 7.6% of their counterparts in Roxbury, while the figures for stroke are 1.3% and 5.5%, respectively—the data point to the potential to improve health outcomes by addressing systemic barriers to care.
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S., the AHA found in its 2026 statistics update. Stroke is the fourth leading cause of death. The AHA tracked improvements in overall cardiovascular mortality, but heart disease and stroke nonetheless accounted for more than one in four U.S. deaths.
As a provider of research, discovery and safety assessment services, Charles River works on medicines designed to prevent those deaths. The company is selling its contract development and manufacturing and cell solutions businesses to GI Partners, primarily for performance-based payments. IQVIA is buying European discovery services sites from Charles River for $145 million.
The divestitures follow a tough period for Charles River, which was hit by the simultaneous downturn in biotech funding and pullback in Big Pharma spending ahead of the patent cliff. William Blair analysts said in a note to investors Friday that Charles River should be among the first service providers to benefit from a recovery in biopharma spending because of the short-cycle nature of its business.
