Juno/WuX­i's cell ther­a­py ven­ture buys out sol­id tu­mor play­er in Chi­na, gain­ing a dis­cov­ery en­gine and por­tend­ing more M&A to come

If the cell ther­a­py field in the US is just get­ting start­ed with two com­mer­cial CAR-T play­ers, Chi­na rep­re­sents an even big­ger un­tapped mar­ket for James Li, the CEO of JW Ther­a­peu­tics.

“The whole space is wide open,” he said.

His com­pa­ny, a joint ven­ture cre­at­ed by Juno and WuXi AppTec, has been at the heels of its US coun­ter­parts. It has a BLA at Chi­na’s drug reg­u­la­tors for the lead pro­gram tar­get­ing CD19, a re­vised ver­sion of Juno’s JCAR017; is de­vel­op­ing a BC­MA ther­a­py to fol­low; and more re­cent­ly got in­to NK cells. The team, con­sist­ing of 200-plus em­ploy­ees, cov­ers every­thing from process de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing to reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs and qual­i­ty con­trol.

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