Wuxi Sta forms Partnership with Beta Pharma

Sta Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Co., Ltd., (Wuxi Sta) – a sub­sidiary of Wuxi AppTec – and Beta Phar­ma, a biotech com­pa­ny focus­ing on inno­v­a­tive drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment in oncol­o­gy, announce a strate­gic part­ner­ship. Under the terms of the col­lab­o­ra­tion, Wuxi Sta will become the pre­ferred CDMO part­ner of Beta Phar­ma, lever­ag­ing its plat­form to accel­er­ate process R&D and man­u­fac­tur­ing of lat­er phase and com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion – uti­liz­ing the Mar­ket­ing Autho­riza­tion Hold­er (MAH) scheme.

Beta Phar­ma is an emerg­ing spe­cial­ty phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to the dis­cov­ery, devel­op­ment, and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of inno­v­a­tive late stage ther­a­pies tar­get­ing oncology.

The com­pa­ny has a pedi­gree span­ning some 20 years and its founder Dr. Xiaodong Zhang even par­tic­i­pat­ed in the mol­e­c­u­lar inven­tion, devel­op­ment and list­ing in Chi­na of the first small mol­e­cule tar­get­ed anti­cancer drug, Ico­tinib. Today, Beta Phar­ma con­tin­ues to expand its pipeline to inte­grate anti­cancer drugs and ther­a­pies, such as bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, into its long-term devel­op­ment planning.

In Feb­ru­ary 2019, Beta Phar­ma offi­cial­ly launched the Chi­na reg­is­tered Phase II clin­i­cal tri­al for the tar­get BPI-7711 – a third gen­er­a­tion of EGFR TKI that has a high­ly selec­tive inhibito­ry effect on T790M muta­tions and EGFR sin­gle mutant tumors after a gen­er­a­tion of EGFR TKI resis­tance. The com­pa­ny also has anoth­er tar­get, BPI-1178 under­go­ing pre­clin­i­cal research and it is expect­ed to sub­mit a clin­i­cal appli­ca­tion in the first quar­ter of 2019.

Wuxi Sta was cho­sen as the strate­gic part­ner thanks to its indus­try lead­ing “end-to-end” CMC plat­form for new drug devel­op­ment from pre­clin­i­cal to com­mer­cial – for both API and fin­ished dosage forms – as well as its exper­tise and track record for meet­ing glob­al qual­i­ty standards.

“We’re delight­ed to part­ner with such a well-respect­ed, world-class CDMO such as WuXi STA,” said Dr. Xiaodong Zhang, CEO of Beta Phar­ma. “Wuxi Sta’s enabling end-to-end CMC plat­form and effi­cient, flex­i­ble solu­tions that meet the time­li­ness of our clin­i­cal and com­mer­cial use, will enable us to advance our pipeline more quick­ly worldwide.”

“Our mis­sion is to empow­er and accel­er­ate cus­tomers to devel­op inno­v­a­tive drugs from clin­i­cal to com­mer­cial – faster and more effi­cient­ly. We are delight­ed to become the strate­gic part­ner of Beta Phar­ma and look for­ward to help­ing them advance their drug can­di­dates towards the clin­ic, bring­ing inno­v­a­tive med­i­cines for the ben­e­fit of patients around the world.”

Dr. Minzhang Chen, CEO of Wuxi Sta