ChemPartner Expands Global Footprint With Huge Bay Area R&D Facility

February 3, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

SHANGHAI -- ChemPartner, a preclinical research partner for healthcare companies, is planning a 24,000 square foot pharmaceutical research and development facility in San Francisco, the company announced Tuesday.

The new facility planned for South San Francisco, will serve as a research hub for scientists from the various biotech companies partnered with ChemPartner. The scientists will collaborate with ChemPartner’s own scientists based in China on developing “complex drug discovery projects,” according to a company statement. When announcing the facility. In its announcement ChemPartner did not say how many positions will be coming to the Bay area when the new facility will be built. The company did not provide a timeline for construction.

ChemPartner, which was founded in 2002, currently employs more than 2,000 scientists in three research sites in China. ChemPartner selected San Francisco as the site of its new research hub due to the high concentration of other life science companies, company officials said.

"In addition to proximity to the top industry talent, the new facility brings ChemPartner services closer to the biopharmaceutical communities in the U.S., and will enable us to develop more innovative ways to bring value to our partners, said ChemPartner CEO Michael Hui.

The San Francisco facility is part of a planned build-out of ChemPartner's research presence in major innovation hubs around the world. ChemPartner offers a range of integrated services across the “drug discovery and development process” to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies around the globe. Company services include discovery biologics, discovery chemistry, discovery biology and preclinical development, pharmaceutical development, small molecule and biologics manufacturing services.

In July 2014 ChemPartner, a contract research organizational division of the ShangPharma group, expanded its integrated drug discovery research collaboration with Cambridge, Mass.-based Agios, the first biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of novel therapeutics in the emerging field of cancer metabolism. That partnership is focused on the areas of protein science, HTS, in vitro enzyme assay, cell biology and in vivo pharmacology.

In August of 2014 ChemPartner announced it will provide fully integrated services in the areas of DMPK, pharmacology and toxicology for Heidelberg Germany-based ELARA's lead oncology programs. Members of the joint project team from both sides will work closely together to design and execute a drug screening cascade.

In November ChemPartner began working with epigenetics and gene regulation research company Active Motif to develop technology for epigenetic biochemical assays to boost enzyme activity and reference potency.

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