Chinese contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) WuXi Vaccines announced it has entered a partnership letter of intent with a global vaccine leader, without identifying which company is involved.
The deal for vaccine manufacturing will be implemented by WuXi Vaccines, a CDMO focusing on human vaccines established through a joint venture company between WuXi Biologics and Shanghai-based Hile Bio-Technology.
WuXi Vaccines will undertake the building of a vaccine manufacturing facility to provide supply of the potential commercial product in the global market, with the value of the 20-year manufacturing contract estimated to be worth more than $3bn (€2.69bn).
The facility will be dedicated to manufacture of the product that the partner will market and Chris Chen, WuXi Biologics’ CEO, could only tell us that this product is a vaccine currently under clinical trials and a ‘first of its kind in the industry’.
According to Chen, the company is still doing site selection and details such as the location and area of the new facility are still under consideration.
However, it was announced that the facility will include drug substance manufacturing (DS), drug product manufacturing (DP) and quality control labs (QC).
Chen said in a statement that “Vaccine CDMO is one of the next growth areas for WuXi Biologics,” and added that this project will ‘contribute substantially’ to the parent company’s growth.
Speaking about the establishment of WuXi Vaccines, in collaboration with Hile, Chen told us, “Our strong expertise in regulatory and quality system of biologics and Hile’s abundant experience in vaccine have a good complementarity, which will take advantage of the opportunities of the global vaccine market.”
WuXi Biologics has actively invested in the expansion of its capabilities, such as through plans to build a 1.3 million-square-feet site in southwest China, which was announced earlier this month, and ongoing construction of a manufacturing site near Beijing.