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WuXi STA, the small-molecule drugmaking arm of China’s WuXi AppTec, broke ground earlier this month on a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Middletown, Delaware.
The project, a 75-hectare campus announced last year, is a major push for WuXi STA into the US market, where the company currently operates a smaller facility in San Diego. The new facility received a $19 million grant from the state of Delaware and is expected to create approximately 500 jobs by 2026.
But the company’s plans in Delaware, at least for the first phase, no longer include production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs)—the chemical hearts of small-molecule drugs—which were a key component of the facility when it was announced last year.
WuXi STA tells C&EN that the current scope of the project is “drug product development and manufacturing as well as packaging and distribution.” Drug product is an industry term for a formulated pill or injection.
“To me it sounds like they are reevaluating and looking at what they need, which might make sense,” says James Bruno, president of the consulting firm Chemical and Pharmaceutical Solutions. “It seems everything they are doing [in Delaware] is around drug product.”
Bruno notes that the company may not want the expense of adding API production in Delaware on top of other large investments. Last year WuXi STA acquired a drug product plant in Switzerland from Bristol Myers Squibb. And WuXi AppTec recently announced a $1.4 billion, 10-year project to build a research and manufacturing facility in Singapore. Various other sites, including the future Singapore plant, are options for API production, Bruno notes.
The demand for US-produced APIs, which reached a fever pitch at the height of the pandemic, may have decreased in urgency over the past year, a shift that could impact investment decisions, Bruno says. “I get a lot of clients telling me they’d like to [have API produced] in the US,” Bruno says. “But they’re willing to take Europe.”
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