China, NJ-December 20, 2018- PharmaBlock Sciences (Nanjing), Inc., the leading provider of innovative chemistry products and services throughout pharmaceutical R&D process, celebrated groundbreaking of its new $65 million Discovery Chemistry and Process R&D Center in Nanjing, China. The new hub is set to expand almost four times of the company’s current headquarters located in the same area. This investment is part of a campaign by PharmaBlock of continuous improvements in enriching novel building blocks, exploring new chemistry technologies, enhance process R&D capabilities, and commercial manufacturing of intermediates and APIs.
Slated to open in late 2020, the new 664,047 sq. ft R&D Center is projected to erect three laboratory buildings, with over 382,000 sq. ft lab space for 1200 employees. The hub is designed to contain a full array of modern and state-of-art labs including medicinal chemistry, synthetic chemistry, process R&D and safety labs, as well as ASL (Automated Synthesis Lab). It will also work on top notch engineering technologies and chemistry technologies, such as flow chemistry and enzyme technology etc. to ensure its ability to meet the future demands of the industry.
Officially started in 2008, PharmaBlock has been growing fast over the past years. Now the company has more than 350 chemists working on over 60 chemical series, covering almost all the key structures in small molecule drug R&D. Many of the building blocks designed and synthesized by PharmaBlock have been applied in the clinical candidates and marketed drugs.
“We supply the building blocks and advanced intermediates from gram scale to multi-kilo and metric-ton scale, and witness the molecules advanced into preclinical and clinical stages, and finally into commercialization. This expansion will allow us to embrace leap-forward development in the coming years, by upgrading the facilities, gathering more talents, enlarge the novel portfolio at a much quicker pace, and extend competence in process development of building blocks and intermediates. Our unchanging goal is to enable and accelerate drug R&D.” said Dr. Minmin Yang, chairman of PharmaBlock.
In September 2018, PharmaBlock has newly acquired a GMP compliant manufacturing facility in Shangyu, Zhejiang Province, ramping up commercialized manufacturing capabilities considerably. The same year, PharmaBlock (USA), Inc. completed renovation of its new process R&D center in Philadelphia Suburbs, co-located with products distribution and custom service center. The laboratories are set up to support PharmaBlock’s growth in supplying pharmaceutical intermediates and APIs to North American customers.