Siegfried has broke ground for its new global R&D centre for drug substances at its site in Evionnaz, Switzerland. The company is investing up to €23 million at the facility, which will begin operations in 2024 and host about 100 scientists, working alongside another R&D centre at the main site in Zofingen. The centre will host advanced chemical and analytical facilities and laboratories, offering chemical process R&D and analytical development services for the entire drug substances network, Siegfried said.

Azelis has announced the opening of new laboratories within the space of a month. Each covers different applications and is located on different continent.

A new pharmaceuticals and healthcare application laboratory in Courbevoie, France, complements existing ones in the UK and Turkey, the company said. It is equipped to address challenges in areas such as API solubilisation and bioavailability, compliance, counterfeiting and misuse, and the optimisation of formulations and production processes.

Seqens is to make an investment of nearly RMB 300 million (€40 million) in three major new production capacity projects for the healthcare and cosmetics markets at Taixing and Wuxi, China. CEO Pierre Luzeau (pictured) announced this during a meeting President Macron had with between President Xi Jinping and Macron in Beijing on 6 April.

CDMO supply chains “are potentially the biggest single risk to product resilience, yet they remain an area often overlooked by drug sponsors in partnering criteria”, said Bikash Chatterjee, CEO of Pharmatech Associates during a panel entitled ‘Redesigning the Supply Chain – The Road to Increased Resilience’. This was held as part of the online element of CPHI North America.

WuXi STA has added two 2,000 L reactors and a large-scale continuous purification system for peptide manufacturing at its Changzhou campus, bringing the total reactor volume for solid-phase peptide synthesis to over 10,000 L. It has also added a new system that features 300-DAC twin columns for continuous purification of kilogram-scale peptides and oligonucleotides, with faster turnaround times and lower solvent consumption.

Italian CDMO Dipharma Francis has completed of the expansion of its R&D centre for small molecules at its headquarters site in Baranzate, near Milan. This boosts lab space for analytical R&D activities by over 130%. The equipment includes a new 500 MHz NMR and the centre is managed via cloud-based integrated data systems.

Brenntag has opened its new pharmaceutical application development centre in the Singapore Science Park. This will be the company’s first pharma R&D facility anywhere, as well as part of Brenntag Specialties’ global network of 82 innovation and application development centres.

“Singapore is an ideal location for our first pharmaceutical application development centre, given its thriving ecosystem of R&D partners, technology providers and talent,” said Romain Girard, president of pharma Asia-Pacific at Brenntag Specialties. T