WuXi STA said this week it has opened a new continuous manufacturing (flow chemistry) plant for large-scale active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and advanced intermediate production at the Chinese site.

This latest expansion, the company said, reflects a continuous effort to enhance its flow chemistry platform in response to the increasing customer demand for safe and sustainable pharmaceutical manufacturing.

The new plant features 11 continuous production lines supporting 20 types of challenging reactions, including low temperature metallo-organic reactions, photochemical reactions, high-temperature high-pressure reactions, nitration reactions and ozonolysis.

With the latest addition, the company said it now has multiple flow chemistry R&D labs and 25 continuous manufacturing lines in China, at Shanghai as well as Changzhou.

At the end of June, WuXi STA opened a new HPAPI plant at Changzhou to meet growing demand for high-potency API process R&D and manufacturing services. This facility consists of reactors of 250 to 3,000 liters, prep-HPLC systems and a 10 m² tray lyophilizer, as well as flow chemistry and milling technologies.

With its advanced isolation, the new line can handle potent compounds with Occupational Exposure Limit (OEL) as low as 10 ng/m³. WuXi STA said its sites at both Shanghai and Changzou are equipped with multiple HP process R&D and analytical labs, kilo labs and process technologies to provide customers a dual supply chain to meet their HPAPI needs from preclinical to commercial.

Xiaoyong Fu, CTO and Head of API Business at WuXi STA, said the business expansion moves are in reaction to fast-growing customer demand driven by the extensive application of flow chemistry in the pharmaceutical industry.

Investment in Singapore

WuXi AppTec, which provides R&D and manufacturing services, plans to build a new R&D and manufacturing site in Singapore at a cost of $1.43 billion. This project, to be implemented in stages over the next ten years, is designed to further enable its global partners to advance healthcare innovations, the company said.

Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist