This year at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, BIOCAD and Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Holding entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to create two joint ventures for production, clinical development, registration, and marketing of several high-cost medicines based on monoclonal antibodies in the People’s Republic of China.
The signing ceremony took place on September 12, 2018 at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF). The MoU was signed by Mr. Dmitry Morozov, BIOCAD’s founder and CEO, and Mr. Jun Zhou, Board Chairman at Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Holding Co.Ltd. The ceremony was attended by Denis Manturov, Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation.
These Russian-Chinese joint ventures will be established with the main purpose of development, manufacturing, authorization, and marketing of at least six BIOCAD’s products used in advanced therapy of cancer and autoimmune diseases (chronic lymphpatic leukemia, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, psoriasis, ankylosing spondylitis, etc.).
“We believe that transferring BIOCAD’s technologies to a jointly-owned manufacturing facility in China will boost our pharmaceutical exports,” said Dmitry Morozov commenting the Memorandum, “It will also allow our Chinese partnes to acquire the platform and valuable experience that is necessary manufacturing other mAb-based biological therapeutics. This will provide a new venue for cooperation between Russia and China.” Dmitry Morozov added that these joint ventures are unique and that this is the first massive Russian-Chinese cooperation project in pharmaceutical industry. Construction of jointly-owned production facilities for monoclonal antibody APIs in China start as early as 2019.
The development of international economic activities is an essential area of BIOCAD’s focus. The overall value of export contracts signed in the last few years is over $850 million, and currently BIOCAD supplies its medications to 14 countries.
According to Evaluate Pharma, a global analytical company, the $165 billion pharmaceutical market in China is the second-largest in the world. At the same time, the share of foreign suppliers does not exceed 25%. Since drug coverage expences are drastically increasing, the Chinese government is interested in cutting the costs of high-tech medicines, which gives promising opportunities to international biotech companies.
