Deals and Financings

Porton Fine Chemicals (SHE: 300363) of Chongqing will acquire Jiangxi Dongbang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. for $41.5 million. Both companies are contract manufacturers of intermediates (see story). The purchase will be paid with $16 million in cash and the remainder in stock. To pay for the acquisition, Porton raised as much as $11 million through a private placement. Founded in 2002 by returnees who worked at AkzoNobel, Porton specializes in chiral technology. 

Shanghai Pharmaceuticals (SHA: 601607; HK: 2607), an active drugmaker and one of China's big three drug distributors, will form an on-line drug distribution JV (see story). The new JV will be known as Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Greater Health Online Company. Shanghai Pharma will invest $11 million in the JV and Zhongxie Pharma will invest another $5 million (Shanghai Pharma has a 22% stake in Zhongxie). Zhongxie, a direct-to-patient drug company, will run the new on-line venture. 

Company News

WuXi PharmaTech (NYSE: WX), a China-US CRO, will build a new facility on its Philadelphia campus to manufacture viral vector cell therapy products, such as chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR T cell) therapies (see story). The 145,000-square-foot cGMP plant is in addition to a 45,000 square foot cell therapy manufacturing facility WuXi announced one year ago, which is now nearing completion. WuXi said the cost for the two Philadelphia manufacturing plants totals $40 million. In China, WuXi has two additional building projects underway: a small-molecule plant in Changzhou and a commercial-scale biologics plant in Wuxi city at a total cost of $300 million. 

GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) announced plans for a larger Asia headquarters in Singapore, where the company currently has its Asia head office (see story). The new space will total about 160,000 square feet and house up to 1,000 employees. GSK currently has 700 office employees in Singapore, after 150 positions were moved there during the last year. The company expects to add another 100 workers as the new facility nears completion, which is two years away. 

Green Cross, a South Korean biopharma, signed a MOU earlier this month with China's Guizhou provincial government to build a cell therapy manufacturing and distributing center in Guizhou, a southwestern province of China (see story). The company offers a portfolio of approved and investigational cell therapy projects including T cell, NK cell, dendritic cell and stem cells. As a reason for the investment, Green Cross cited the increasing global interest in cell therapy treatments for serious diseases. 

Trials and Approvals

Luqa Pharmaceuticals, a Hong Kong in-licensing company, will begin a China launch of Ialuxid®, a non-antibiotic antimicrobial gel made by BMG Pharma S.r.l. of Italy (see story). Ialuxid combines hyaluronic acid, hydrogen peroxide and glycine, forming a film to promote wound healing, especially surgical wounds, while fighting bacteria and inflammation. It has been approved as a medical device in Europe and China, and is under review in the US. Luqa in-licensed three products from BMG in 2013. 

Hua Medicine of Shanghai has filed an Investigational New Drug (IND) application with the FDA to begin US clinical trials of its novel type 2 diabetes treatment, a 4th-generation glucokinase activator (GKA) (see story). In February, Hua filed to start a Phase II trial of sinogliatin in China, after reporting positive Phase Ib data. Hua in-licensed global rights to sinogliatin from Roche (SIX: ROG)  in 2011. In January, Hua completed a $25 million funding round to support the two trials. 

Featured Companies

Steve Yang, PhD, Executive Vice-President and COO of WuXi AppTec (NYSE: WX), spoke about China's drug development ecosystem before he participates in the 2015 edition of the annual ChinaBio® Partnering Forum, which will be held April 15-16 in Shanghai (see story).  This year, Dr. Yang will moderate the Plenary Panel entitled "Biologics: China's New Wave of Innovation," which will feature four highly innovative biologics companies in China. WuXi has built up its biologic CRO offerings in the last few years, and now offers fully US compliant biologic manufacturing services, in addition to biologics development. 

Disclosure: none.