Singapore site for WuXi AppTec

WuXi AppTec has announced a plan to build a new R&D and manufacturing site in Singapore at a cost of up to $1.4 billion. It will be created in stages over the next ten years, depending on the company’s business needs.

The company added that the site will serve “a critical role in its global network across Asia, Europe and North America”. It ill include “laboratories and facilities that provide a broad portfolio of R&D and manufacturing services” for the pharmaceutical industry.

More immediately, subsidiary company WuXi STA has opened both a large-scale oligonucleotide and peptide manufacturing facility and a new flow chemistry plant for large-scale API manufacture at its campus in Changzhou in Jiangsu province, China (pictured) .

The 2,840 m2 oligonucleotide plant has four large-scale and over 20 small- to mid-scale production lines that increase the overall manufacturing capacity of a single synthesis run from 1.9 to 6.0 mol. The 2,000 m2 peptide plant features three new production lines with reactors that can accommodate up to 1,000 L, increasing the company’s total reactor volume for SPPS to 6,490 L.

The flow chemistry plant, meanwhile, features 11 continuous production lines which support 20 types of reactions, including low temperature metallo-organic reactions, photochemical reactions, high-temperature high-pressure reactions, nitration reactions and ozonolysis. This brings the company’s total number of continuous manufacturing lines across China to 25.

This all came shortly after WuXi STA opened another HPAPI plant at Changzhou. This consists of 250-3,000 litre reactors, prep-HPLC systems, a 10 m2 tray lyophiliser, plus flow chemistry and milling technologies. It also has advanced isolation technologies, enabling it to handle compounds with OELs down to 10 ng/m3.