GE Healthcare has agreed to configure a biomanufacturing facility in Changxing, Zhejiang, China for Clover Biopharmaceuticals, a Chengdu, China-headquartered biotechnology company developing biologic therapies. GE will use its FlexFactory platform, a biomanufacturing platform based on single-use technologies.

The new facility will mainly be used to produce biological fusion protein products, including innovative drugs and biosimilars. It will be located in one of the national economic development zones in China, Changxing Economic and Technological Development Zone, where a new biopharmaceutical industrial cluster is being developed. The biomanufacturing facility includes two 2,000-liter bioreactors from GE and is expected to be operational in the latter half of 2018.

The first therapeutic product produced using the biomanufacturing platform will be SCB-808, a biosimilar candidate for a prefilled syringe formulation of Amgen’s Enbrel (etanercept) for treating rheumatoid arthritis.

GE’s pact with Clover Biopharmaceuticals follows a recent announcement with another pharmaceutical company based in China. In January 2018, GE partnered with Cellular Biomedicine Group (CBMG), a Shanghai-headquartered clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on cancer immunotherapies and stem-cell therapies for degenerative diseases, under which GE will configure a biomanufacturing facility for CBMG using GE’s FlexFactory platform.

Source: GE Healthcare