AstraZeneca To Build International Life Science Innovation Park in China
Image Courtesy: AstraZeneca
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AstraZeneca To Build International Life Science Innovation Park in China

AstraZeneca will be collaborating with Wuxi High-tech Govt to build an International Life Science Innovation Park in the west of Shanghai – China. The infrastructure will soon be constructed by the municipal government of Wuxi and the town’s high-tech district authority. The main motto is to provide global companies with shared laboratory space, equipment and services while offering links to local hospitals and academic institutions.

The project will also encourage AstraZeneca’s R&D efforts, including the business’s end-to-end development and commercialization work inside the nation –with Wuxi previously serving as home to the biotech’s China Commercial Innovation Center.

AstraZeneca was joined by a number of its current international partners–Sweden’s BioVentureHub and The Skolkovo Foundation from Russia–during the signing of a memorandum of understanding together with the U.K. BioIndustry Association, which has pledged to help companies establish operations in Wuxi.

Steve Bates, chief executive of the U.K. BioIndustry Association, stated in an announcement that- China is an important and exciting opportunity for U.K. life science companies, this opportunity to participate in the creation of the new Wuxi audience is just not to be missed.

Mr. Bates stated that- This new opportunity will enable U.K. businesses

to co-locate with AstraZeneca in China within a truly supportive local ecosystem making it easier for U.K along with life sciences firms associate, grow and innovate with like-minded dynamic companies and investors in China.

AstraZeneca has been making more inroads into China–spending millions to widen its R&D footprint, alongside manufacturing partnerships with WuXi AppTec–while other U.K. drugmakers have run into challenges at times. In the months before AstraZeneca formed a $133 million Chinese joint venture in 2017, GlaxoSmithKline declared that would shut its neuroscience R&D center in Shanghai and move key apps into the U.S. Though GSK did not say how many staffers would be affected by the reorganization, it did say that the organization’s larger R&D organization would remain in the town, with plans to expand to additional medicines and continue its work with the Institute for Infectious Diseases and Public Health in Beijing.

In recent fourth-quarter financial results, AstraZeneca saw double-digit growth from China in the year 2018. The company’s blockbuster lung cancer medication Tagrisso outperformed analysts’ expectations, with over half of its emerging market sales coming from China. Tagrisso to become general top-selling medication in 2019 as expected by AstraZeneca, after securing first-line approvals in EGFR-related non-small cell lung cancer and $1.86 billion in global sales last year.

While the firm agreed to big reductions to receive it on China’s National Reimbursement Drug List, AstraZeneca hopes to see a high number of new patients to return to the treatment, due to a higher incidence of EGFR mutations in the Asia-Pacific region as well as a possible first-line approval in the first half of 2019.