WuXi PharmaTech Completes St. Paul Facility, Begins New R&D, cGMP Facility Construction
WuXi PharmaTech, a pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and research and development company based out of China, has announced that it has completed construction on a new facility in St. Paul, Minnesota. The St. Paul facility, which is expected to be in operation by the end of June, will give the company added capacity for current services such as particle identification and extractable/leachable testing. Dynamic light scattering for nanoparticle characterization is an additional service that the company will gain through the development of the facility. The laboratory is 20,000 square-feet, and the services provided will allow WuXi to scale up technologies for the chemical analysis of medical materials.
Dr. Ge Li, chairman and CEO of WuXi PharmaTech, says, “WuXi is committed to helping medical device and biologics companies bring their products to market faster. This facility and WuXi's trained staff will better serve our customers' growing need to quantify the chemical safety of materials used in medical devices and biologics.”
News of the St. Paul facility completion comes shortly after the company’s announcement that it has begun construction on a manufacturing facility in Changzhou, about 110 miles West of Shanghai. The facility will be dedicated to research and development and cGMP manufacturing, and will be run by WuXi PharmaTech’s manufacturing subsidiary, Syn-The-All, or STA Pharmaceuticals. The new facility is being developed to meet the growing demand for WuXi’s manufacturing services. WuXi’s manufacturing services have quadrupled the company’s revenues in the last 4 years. The Changzhou facility is scheduled to be operation in the last quarter of 2015. The facility will employ 1,500 employees and is expected to double the company’s current manufacturing capacity.
According to Ge Li, “This project marks an important milestone in STA's mission of building a fully integrated API development and manufacturing platform. It furthers our commitment to providing partners worldwide with highly efficient and cost-effective solutions that help bring better medicines faster to patients.”