Charles River Laboratories supports American Heart Association (AHA) campaigns and collaborates with nonprofit organizations on cardiovascular disease awareness, prevention, and community health efforts.
The company, which provides drug discovery and manufacturing services, supports the AHA’s “Heart of Boston” campaign. Through this, the nonprofit organization aims to improve health outcomes in the Boston metropolitan area. Charles River is based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, a town approximately 32 miles north of Boston. The company’s support for AHA is consistent with its corporate citizenship strategy.
The 2025 AHA report identifies the need for projects focused on improving health outcomes in Boston. The report supports the view that zip code is a better predictor of cardiovascular risk than DNA, with the AHA finding that life expectancy and cardiovascular health vary by region.
14% of adults in Cambridge have high blood pressure. Meanwhile, in Roxbury, 8 miles away, 36.8% of people have high blood pressure. In Cambridge, 2.7% of people have heart disease and in Roxbury, 7.6% of people have heart disease, compared to 1.3% and 5.5% of people with stroke, respectively, and this data shows the potential to improve health outcomes by addressing systemic barriers to treatment.
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, according to the AHA’s latest statistics for 2026. Stroke is the fourth leading cause of death. Although the AHA tracked improvements in overall cardiovascular mortality, heart disease and stroke still accounted for more than one in four deaths in the United States.
As a provider of research, discovery and safety evaluation services, Charles River is committed to researching medicines to prevent these deaths. The company sells its contracted development/manufacturing and cell solutions businesses to GI partners primarily on a performance-based basis. IQVIA will acquire European Discovery Services sites from Charles River for $145 million.
The sale comes after a tough period for Charles River, which coincided with a downturn in biotech funding and a reduction in spending by big drug companies in the face of the patent cliff. William Blair analysts said in a note to investors Friday that Charles River should be one of the first service providers to benefit from a recovery in biopharmaceutical spending because of its short business cycles.
