Japanese Pharmaceutical Company and Chinese Biotech Company join hands to form a new venture for production of drugs and clinical trials.
The Japanese company GNI merged with Chinese company Shanghai Genomics. The wet lab facilities and validation would be done by Shanghai Genomics. China will be testing new lead compounds produced by GNI, such as new compounds for lung fibrosis and lung injury, such as damage from cancer radiotherapy, will be tested by china. China has about 300 million smokers and air pollution is high causing damaged lungs, which offers good atmosphere for testing of this new compound.Ames Gross, President Pacific Bridge Medical is not happy with the mergers and is very much afraid of the potential problems such as copycats and piracy of the drugs. “Small companies that lack the resource to protect their IP in court need to be especially careful when thinking about sharing their inventions. Regulations and enforcement in places like China and India is improving, but it’s still possible to get burned.”
The merger would help intensify research in china in the field of medicine and drug discovery. This offer opens a new gate way of out-sourcing in the field of molecular biology, medicinal chemistry and pre-clinical testing to china. China offers low costs, access to large patients for clinical trials and rapidly growing market. “In the near future, Japan and China will be the world’s second and fifth largest pharmaceutical markets,” says Christopher Savoie, GNI’s chief executive.
(Source: Nature Biotechnology)
