STA Pharmaceutical to launch transition metal catalysis centre in Changzhou

STA Pharmaceutical, a WuXi AppTec company, has announced plans to launch a new transition metal catalysis centre at their integrated API process R&D and manufacturing site in Changzhou, China. The new state-of-the-art facility will allow STA to carry out rapid screening of metal catalysts, ligands, bases, acids, chemical resolving reagents, and amide formation coupling reagents, etc. The screening kits will enable high-throughput screening of metal catalysts and ligands for C-C, C-N, C-O and C-S formation reactions, as well as many other types of reactions such as chemical resolution and amide formation. The technology allows the STA team to more rapidly find the optimal catalysts using a parallel interactive testing approach.

A team of scientists specialising in this technology are currently being trained in the company’s Shanghai R&D centre, who will move to the Changzhou site once the new centre becomes fully operational in early November. The $140 million project is being built in stages but when complete is slated to have more than 500 scientists and 1,500 cubic metres of reactor volume.

Earlier this year, STA Pharmaceutical, had merged its operations with the pharmaceutical development services (PDS) division of its parent company, WuXi ApppTec. This provided it with benefits from PD such as pre-formulation development, formulation development, and clinical trial material (CTM) manufacturing, packaging and labelling of oral solid dosage forms, including tablets, capsules, sachets and oral solutions/suspensions. The merger also afforded the company the opportunity to advance new drug applications (NDAs) as well as faster, more efficient marketing.

WuXi also has a biologics operation which is building a plant. In 2015, WuXi had said it would invest about $100 million in a two-year project to double its biologics facility.