Cathal Friel had a plan: through acquisitions, he was going to bolt together a small drug research business. Then he was going to sell it.  The term for these companies is contract research organisations, or CROs. They’re the companies drug companies pay to run clinical trials. CRO businesses are more steady-Eddie than early-stage biotech, which either make a fortune or nothing at all. Friel’s CRO is called Open Orphan. Open Orphan is made up of two businesses: Venn Life Sciences, which it acquired in June last year, and hVivo, which it acquired in January of this year. Both of these…

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