As­traZeneca has been grow­ing its pres­ence in Chi­na over the past sev­er­al years, and the phar­ma’s lat­est ven­ture in the coun­try will see it es­tab­lish a man­u­fac­tur­ing process for COPD treat­ments.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease, trans­lat­ed from Chi­nese, As­traZeneca of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced it will ex­pand its in­vest­ment in Chi­na and plans to spend some cash to con­struct a pro­duc­tion and sup­ply base as well, as a re­gion­al head­quar­ters in the port city of Qing­dao, Shan­dong in east­ern Chi­na. Qing­dao will al­so be home to an in­no­va­tion cen­ter fo­cused on rare dis­eases, a life sci­ence in­no­va­tion park and an in­dus­tri­al fund.

The com­pa­ny ad­di­tion­al­ly said that the planned man­u­fac­tur­ing and sup­ply base in Qing­dao will pro­duce the in­gre­di­ents for Breztri, a ther­a­peu­tic that treats COPD. As­traZeneca de­clined to com­ment on the cost, size or time­lines on the man­u­fac­tur­ing space and in­no­va­tion cen­ter.

“As­traZeneca’s in­vest­ment in the Qing­dao pro­duc­tion and sup­ply base aims to bet­ter meet the huge de­mand of pa­tients for Breztri in­hala­tion aerosols. To fur­ther pro­mote the de­vel­op­ment of Qing­dao’s bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try and con­tribute to the Na­tion­al Health Vi­sion 2030, As­traZeneca will con­tin­ue to strength­en its con­fi­dence in in­creas­ing in­vest­ment in Chi­na,” said Wang Lei, the Chi­na pres­i­dent of As­traZeneca, in a state­ment.

Breztri, which gained ap­proval in Chi­na in 2019, had a rocky jour­ney with US reg­u­la­tors. In 2019, the triple-drug com­bi­na­tion treat­ment was orig­i­nal­ly shot down with a CRL, but it fi­nal­ly re­ceived the green light in 2020.

And while As­traZeneca has a sol­id pres­ence in Chi­na with sup­ply bases in Wuxi and Taizhou, Jiang­su, Chi­na, some staffers re­cent­ly found them­selves in trou­ble.

In Jan­u­ary, mul­ti­ple sus­pects were ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with an al­leged med­ical in­sur­ance fraud scheme or­ga­nized by As­traZeneca Chi­na em­ploy­ees, the coun­try’s Na­tion­al Health­care Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NHSA) said. The ar­rests oc­curred af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion found ev­i­dence that staff mem­bers tam­pered with the ge­net­ic test­ing re­sults of tu­mor pa­tients to de­fraud med­ical in­sur­ance funds.

Just shy of four months ago, Gilead’s next-gen HIV drug candidate lenacapavir got hit with a CRL over CMC issues involving the type of vials planned for use. Now, the pharma is headed back to the FDA for round two.

Gilead announced Monday afternoon that it had refiled its NDA submission filled with new CMC data after the FDA essentially balked at borosilicate glass vials, originally used for the non-oral form of lenacapavir. The drug candidate, which recently won a positive opinion from Europe’s CHMP, is being developed for HIV-1 infection “in heavily treatment-experienced (HTE) people with multi-drug resistant (MDR) HIV-1 infection.”

Astellas and Sutro Biopharma are linking arms on a new field of antibody-drug conjugates that they hope will improve upon existing cancer immunotherapies.

The Tokyo pharma will dole out $90 million in cash for the collaboration, the companies said Monday afternoon. That upfront payment will extend the South San Francisco biotech’s runway from late 2023 into the first half of 2024, Cowen analysts noted.

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

Amidst recently broader vaccine manufacturing initiatives from the EU and European companies, the G7 summit in the mountains of Bavaria has brought about some positive news for closing vaccine and medical product manufacturing gaps around the globe.

According to a statement from the White House, the G7 leaders have formally launched the partnership for global infrastructure, PGII. The effort will aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to deliver infrastructure projects in several sectors including the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space.