Post-Hoc: Biose­cure is dead. Long live Biose­cure? 

Last March, I re­ceived a flur­ry of texts and emails from read­ers. It was one of the strongest re­ac­tions I’ve ever got­ten to an ar­ti­cle.

End­points News had just pub­lished my piece on WuXi AppTec build­ing it­self in­to a biotech su­per­store, and the en­su­ing freak­out over Con­gress’ pro­posed ban of the com­pa­ny. The biggest ques­tion from read­ers: Would the bill, called the Biose­cure Act, re­al­ly be­come law?

For now, the an­swer seems like no. As of yes­ter­day, it was left out of an end-of-the-year leg­isla­tive pack­age that seemed like its last, best hope of pas­sage — at least in the short term.

Sources have told me that Chi­na hawks will try to re­boot Biose­cure next year de­spite past op­po­si­tion from Rep. Jim Mc­Gov­ern (D-MA) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who be­lieve a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty case hasn’t been made for tar­get­ing WuXi com­pa­nies.

And even if Biose­cure is dead for now, its in­flu­ence is still be­ing felt.

Last week, Alise Re­icin, the CEO of Tec­ton­ic Ther­a­peu­tic, said dur­ing an End­points we­bi­nar that her team used a WuXi com­pa­ny for its lead drug pro­gram but switched man­u­fac­tur­ers for its sec­ond as­set. Tec­ton­ic was un­nerved by Biose­cure, even when it was amend­ed to in­clude a grand­fa­ther clause that gave drug­mak­ers un­til 2032 to work with WuXi.

“I know 2032 sounds like a long time. It’s not a long time at all, and we’re all ner­vous about enough ca­pac­i­ty be­ing avail­able at the oth­er side,” said Re­icin, whose com­pa­ny is de­vel­op­ing med­i­cines for car­dio-pul­monary dis­eases and oth­er con­di­tions.

Near­ly two-thirds of 100 bio­phar­ma ex­ec­u­tives in our lat­est sur­vey (con­duct­ed be­fore Biose­cure was left out of the spend­ing bill) said they have changed their re­la­tion­ship with bio­phar­ma con­trac­tors as a re­sult of the leg­is­la­tion. (A changed re­la­tion­ship can mean a lot of things, from switch­ing to an al­ter­na­tive sup­pli­er to ques­tion­ing whether to do so.) A few sam­ples from our anony­mous sur­vey: “Be­cause of Biose­cure we changed ven­dors”; “We are very cau­tious now with any Chi­nese ser­vice providers”; and “We are mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion close­ly and have moved some work out of Chi­na.”

There’s one Chi­na trend that Biose­cure hasn’t slowed down, how­ev­er. Phar­ma com­pa­nies are still look­ing for as­sets be­ing de­vel­oped there to build up their own pipelines, and of­ten to find fast me-too com­peti­tors in hot ar­eas.

Just this morn­ing, Mer­ck an­nounced it had agreed to pay up to $2 bil­lion for Chi­nese biotech Han­soh Phar­ma’s ex­per­i­men­tal weight loss drug. That fol­lowed Mer­ck last month li­cens­ing an ear­ly-stage can­cer drug from Shang­hai-based LaNo­va Med­i­cines.

In oth­er words, Biose­cure has caused wor­ries in the R&D de­part­ment, but not as much in the busi­ness de­vel­op­ment of­fice.

If that changes, I an­tic­i­pate many more emails and texts.

— Jared