ISLAND based medical company Panacea Pharma Projects (PPP) has welcomed two new staff to its team.

Lauren Hall takes up the position of pharmacovigilance assistant after obtaining a degree in Pharmaceutical Science and Biological Chemistry at Liverpool John Moore's University.

Sam Tipper has joined the company as an administrator after completing his A-levels at Ballakermeen High School.

PPP is a pharmacovigilance firm which works as a consultancy for pharmaceutical companies to detect and assess any safety concerns which may relate to prescription drugs.

Its work involves monitoring potential long term and short term side effects of medicines which it does by gathering data from a wide range of sources across the world.

This data is then used to highlight any concerns about the safety of particular drugs or medicines and manufacturers can then analyse data to decide whether recalls of drugs are necessary.

These appointments bring the total number of staff based in the Island to 11. The company is expecting to increase this to 15 by the end of 2011.

As part of the continued expansion plans PPP has moved the company office from Santon to Peterson House, Middle River, Douglas.

Matthew McSevney, PPP's general manager, said: "We required larger offices to accommodate our continued expansion in the number of technical staff we employ. The new offices will give us the space to grow in the future. We have also invested in our IT infrastructure to ensure we have a system to expand with us as we grow. The new system, which has been developed with our local IT provider ITEX, meets the requirements of our growth strategy and protects our IT infrastructure in the years ahead."

PPP has been trading since 2009 and is the only Isle of Man based company specialising in pharmacovigilance.