China R&D Reader

CRO Industry Draws Biomedical Investors to Asia
Battered by economic uncertainty and under pressure to deliver better medical products in more cost-effective ways, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly driven to outsource their research and development to clinical research organisations (CROs) in Asia. This trend in the biomedical sector is poised to make China one of the most [...]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Companies that conduct research for drugmakers are poised for torrid growth in China as their multinational clients look to sell more medicines in the world’s most populous country and cut development costs.
Such contract research organizations, or CROs, charge large drugmakers for conducting all stages of research — from discovery of compounds [...]

There was a sharp slowdown in pharmaceutical outsourcing in the last six months which “really caught a lot of people by surprise”, according to Jim Miller of outsourcing consultancy PharmSource, in his annual review of the sector at the Interphex show in New York.
For the contract research industry, which spans clinical research and early R&D [...]

SGS Life Science Services, the  CRO division of Swiss testing firm SGS, expanded its microbiology testing laboratory in Shanghai, China to offer cGMP compliant API testing services for method development and validation.
The laboratory comprises 700 square metres of floor space and houses 27 full-time analytical staff. It offers current good manufacturing (cGMP) practice standard microbiology, stability and endotoxin [...]

Quintiles Transnational, the Durham company that helps drugmakers test and sell new medicines, gets its business from an industry that is trying to ensure its future by shrinking and consolidating.
Drug development is also undergoing significant changes. But Dennis Gillings, Quintiles’ founder and chief executive, sees opportunity as GlaxoSmithKline cuts costs and jobs, Pfizer buys Wyeth [...]

John Oyler has founded a string of startups in the US, including Genta, a biotech specializing in cancer drug discovery, and Galenea, which focuses on treatments for psychiatric diseases. But in 2005 he chose China as his base to launch BioDuro, a life sciences Contract Research Organisation (CRO). He explains to Chemistry World  how he [...]

Quintiles has consolidated its China-based Global Central Laboratories and Clinical Development Services (CDS) businesses into a new, 17,000-square-foot facility in Sun Dong Ann Plaza in Beijing. The new site is larger than the CRO’s original laboratory located at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH). The CDS plans to grow to a staff of more [...]

China’s second largest contract research organisation (CRO) ShangPharma has attracted $30m (€21m) from US private investment firm TPG as the Asian pharma market continues to simmer.
Headquartered in Shanghai, the firm counts large pharma companies such as Eli Lilly amongst its customers and is now looking to aggressively expand its offerings beyond chemistry outsourcing, into “more [...]

MDS PharmaServices has expanded its services in China, adding significant capacity to its existing central laboratory in Beijing.
The 25,000 sq. ft. addition to the site has given the firm a five-fold increase in testing capacity, four times the amount of space to produce clinical trial kits, and a wider range of specialised clinical trial testing [...]

US services provider Frontier Biosciences has announced that it has bought a majority stake in a China-based preclinical contract research organisation (CRO).
With this new deal, Frontier becomes a shareholder and partner in the National Chengdu Center for Safety Evaluation of Drugs (NCCSED) – a contract research lab specialised in drug safety evaluation.
The move is designed [...]