Press Releases

Shanghai, 1st December 2021: WuXi STA – a subsidiary of WuXi AppTec– and Coherent Biopharma, announced the signing of a strategic partnership agreement. 

According to the agreement, WuXi STA will become the preferred CDMO partner and provide Coherent Biopharma with integrated CMC services to accelerate its present and future drug candidates (small molecule, peptide, oligonucleotide and complex chemical conjugate, etc.), from API to drug product, including but not limited to the process development, manufacturing, analytical and regulatory filing support.

In recent years, Peptide Drug Conjugate (PDC) attracted attention from more and more pharmaceutical companies due to advantages such as strong tumor permeation, good scalability and relatively good pharmacokinetics etc. Coherent Biopharma is dedicated to R&D and commercialization of tumor-targeting ligand-mediated drugs and tumor markers. Based on independently developed BEST™(Bi-Engaging ligand-mediated Selective Targeting) technology platform, Coherent Biopharma has developed a diverse product pipeline with the PDC products, including CBP-1008 and CBP-1018, the two PDC drugs are both in clinical trials in the United States and China. Meanwhile, multiple new drugs are in various R&D stages, ready for clinical development in a few years.

Based on the prior successful collaboration on CBP-1008, this strategic partnership between Coherent Biopharma and WuXi STA is to broaden the collaboration beyond CBP-1008. PDC drugs has broad applications, but the development faces many technical challenges. WuXi STA has been deeply involved in the CDMO industry for more than twenty years, with its leading capability and capacity for small molecule, peptide, high potency API and complex conjugate such as PDC, it will provide a strong support for Coherent Biopharma PDC drug candidate development. 

WuXi STA peptide platform provides comprehensive CRDMO (Contract Research, Development and Manufacturing Organization) services from drug discovery to commercial manufacturing. This vertically integrated peptide platform covers from unnatural amino acid, conjugate, peptide API to drug product, coupled with comprehensive analytical support and CMC writing services, supporting customers bring their peptide therapeutics to market faster. The unique peptide CRDMO platform will provide Coherent Biopharma with flexible and high quality solutions for all projects at different stages.

Dr. Baohua Huang, Chair and GM of Coherent Biopharma, commented, “We are very happy to enhance our partnership with WuXi STA to the next level, who is well known for its world-class scientific and technical strengths and industry leading end-to-end services, which offers great support to our PDC drugs. I am confident that our cooperation will accelerate the pathway of our cancer drugs to market for the benefit of global patients.”

Dr. Minzhang Chen, Co-CEO of WuXi AppTec and CEO of WuXi STA, commented, “We are pleased to form a strategic partnership with Coherent Biopharma. Coherent is one of the pioneers in the development of PDC drugs in China and has made great progress. We are looking forward to further leveraging our proven integrated CMC platform, along with our global standard quality systems, to accelerate Coherent's innovative drug development and ultimately benefit global patients.”

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