Novartis is to invest US$1bn over the next five years to build the largest comprehensive r&d centre in China.
The Swiss drugmaker will significantly expand the Novartis Institute of BioMedical Research (CNIBR) in Shanghai. It will also invest US$250m in a new global technical centre in Changshu.
The CNIBR, currently located in Zhangjiang high-tech park, specialises in basic r&d of new drugs including small molecule and biological medicines. It will relocate to a campus in Shanghai and its expanded activities will span work in analytics and biomarkers, in vivo pharmacology, protein production, characterisation and scale-up screening and chemistry and proteomics, genomics and imaging.
CNIBR is expected to become Novartis" third-largest r&d centre, after Cambridge, Massachusetts, US and Basel, Switzerland. The number of people employed in r&d in China will increase from 160 today to about 1,000.
"We are pleased to contribute to the Shanghai government's aim to establish the city as the premier r&d centre for China's bio-medicine industry by 2012," said Dr Daniel Vasella, ceo of Novartis.
"We are confident that our expanded investment in R&D will result in innovative therapies for patients in China and other countries nurtured by the growing scientific excellence in China."
The global technical centre in Changshu will focus on technical research, development and manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients. The number of jobs at this new centre is projected to double.
The Chinese government is working to expand access to affordable, basic medical services to all citizens by 2020, and recently announced that it would spend approximately US$124bn over the next three years to build the nation's health system.