Early phase CRO Charles River Laboratories will lay off between 26 and 30 employees following the US National Cancer Institute's decision to terminate a contract in which the company supplied rodent models for cancer research. Birgit Girshick, corporate senior VP of Charles River's research models and global biopharmaceutical services, told Outsourcing-pharma.com up to a third of the company's 94 employees at a Frederick, Maryland facility will lose their jobs because of the termination of the contract, which was worth about $12m annually .