WuXi PharmaTech Signs on for Three More Years with AstraZeneca

WuXi PharmaTech (NYSE: WX) has extended its collaboration with AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) for an additional three years. The first collaboration between the two companies, a $14 million two-year agreement begun in 2006, was very successful.

During the last two years, using its high throughput screening capability, WuXi delivered over 100,000 compounds to AstraZeneca, two months ahead of schedule. The new agreement calls for WuXi to, once again, synthesize compounds, following designs indicated by AstraZeneca.

According to AstraZeneca, WuXi exceeded expectations in the first agreement, “delivering value … beyond the cost savings in labor and materials.”

WuXi’s high throughput library compound synthesis and purification process has an annual capacity of one million compounds. Besides being numerous, its products have the proper purity and targeted characteristics.

AstraZeneca has a large and building presence in China. In 2006, the company adopted the slogan “In China, For China,” emphasizing that its goal is to develop medications for local medical needs. It opened its own Innovation Center in China in 2007, focused on cancer, with the goal of developing knowledge about Chinese patients, biomarkers and genetics. The company committed itself in 2006 to spending $100 million on R&D in China over two to three years to serve the market. AstraZeneca has more than 2500 employees in China.

Disclosure: none.