China R&D Reader

Three of big pharma’s biggest companies, Merck, Lilly and Pfizer, have banded together to create an Asian not-for-profit company that will construct a pharmacogenomic cancer database in Singapore. The database will compile its information using 2,000 tissue samples from patients with lung and gastric cancer. The information will be made available to researchers with the [...]

Simcere Pharmaceutical Group has acquired the China rights to a dual-mechanism cancer drug from OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Simcere must first obtain regulatory approval for OSI-930, and then it will produce and market the drug in China. In the US, OSI-930 has completed a Phase I trial. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
OSI-930 is an [...]

Provid Pharmaceuticals of New Jersey and Acesys Pharmatech of China have formed a US-China CRO alliance. The new group puts together Provid’s US-based drug discovery expertise and project management capabilities with Acesys’s China-based medicinal chemistry resources and favorable cost structure. According to the announcement, the alliance will offer all aspects of medicinal chemistry for pharmaceutical [...]

Immtech Pharmaceuticals has become the latest in a string of western research and development services firms to announce a partnership with a peer in China in a bid to get a foothold in this market of vast potential.
The US company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Beijing Capital Medical University (BCMU) in Beijing, [...]

In May, CBI teamed up with Hong Kong-based pharmaceutical development specialist Venturepharma Laboratories to set up an integrated drug development joint-venture in China.
The new company, Venturepharm (Asia), will be headquartered at a 150,000 square foot R&D facility in Jiangsu province on the country’s east coast. Funding is being provided by both VPL and the Chinese [...]

Asian Clinical Trials (ACT), the CRO of Hyderabad, India-based pharmaceutical company Suven Life Sciences, has entered into a pact with the Beijing -based company VPSCRO to conduct clinical trial services in India and China. VPSCRO claims it is the largest Chinese CRO in term of numbers of ongoing trials. The companies stated that the agreement [...]

Venturepharm Laboratories Ltd., one of China’s leading contract research organizations (CRO), and Nasdaq-listed Commonwealth Biotechnologies (CBI), have formed an unincorporated joint venture, a top Venturepharm Labs official told Interfax today.
Bill Guo, chief executive officer with Beijing-headquartered Venturepharm Labs, said that his company is buying a 39 percent stake in CBI. The acquisition will allow the [...]

Maryland-based Global Research Services (GRS) has expanded its China operations and will now offer full clinical trial services to its clients there. The company, through its subsidiary Global Medical Consulting Services in Shanghai, will provide monitoring, site selection, project management and data management. Prior to the expansion, the office, originally set up in 1996, offered [...]

China’s Rundo International Clinical Research Co., Ltd. and Japan-based CRONOVA recently announced the formation of a joint venture contract research organization (CRO) in Shanghai on 19 December, 2007.
The newly-established company is the first ever joint venture CRO in China. Rundo International Clinical Research Co., Ltd., a Shanghai-based CRO mainly specializing in clinical research, has achieved [...]

US-based MPI Research and China’s Shanghai Medicilon have formed a joint venture in preclinical services, as they position themselves to cash in on what is a budding market sector in China.
Coined Medicilon-MPI Preclinical Research, the new venture will be based at the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Shanghai until later this year, when operations will be [...]