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Charles River is the picks-and-shovels company of drug discovery: it breeds the lab rats and mice researchers experiment on, runs the preclinical safety testing that every new drug must pass before human trials, and quality-tests and manufactures cell and gene therapies. Most of the world's approved drugs in the last few years passed through a Charles River lab — but the business is under pressure from a biotech funding slump and activist Elliott.

What Charles River Laboratories really sells

Charles River is the picks-and-shovels company of drug discovery: it breeds the lab rats and mice researchers experiment on, runs the preclinical safety testing that every new drug must pass before human trials, and quality-tests and manufactures cell and gene therapies. Most of the world's approved drugs in the last few years passed through a Charles River lab — but the business is under pressure from a biotech funding slump and activist Elliott.

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