WuXi Biologics has entered into a strategic partnership Letter of Intent (LOI) with a global vaccine leader, under which WuXi Vaccines will build a dedicated facility and supply a commercial product for the global market.

WuXi Vaccines is a joint venture company to be established between WuXi Biologics and Shanghai based Hile Bio-Technology. This business model aims to build world-class integrated platforms and CDMO model to enable global companies to develop and manufacture vaccines.

Under the LOI, WuXi Vaccines will build an integrated vaccine manufacturing facility including drug substance manufacturing (DS), drug product manufacturing (DP) as well as Quality Control labs (QC). The facility will be dedicated to manufacture 100% of the global market of one of the partner’s vaccine products. The value of the 20-year manufacturing contract is estimated to be more than $3 billion.

“This is a historic moment for WuXi Biologics and WuXi Vaccines as well as for the global vaccine industry. Due to process complexity, extensive analytic testing and rigorous regulatory standards, vaccines are difficult to manufacture and process and quality control are extremely critical for the quality of the product. This partnership with a global vaccine leader to exclusively manufacture a vaccine for the global market, first of its kind in the industry, is a further testimony to the technical strengths and premier quality demonstrated by WuXi Biologics,” said Dr. Chris Chen, chief executive officer of WuXi Biologics, “Vaccine CDMO is one of the next growth areas for WuXi Biologics. Once this project is initiated, our vaccine business will contribute substantially to the growth of WuXi Biologics. WuXi Biologics together with WuXi Vaccines will continue to provide our global partners with a robust and premier-quality supply chain network to produce high quality products to benefit patients worldwide, initially with therapeutic proteins and now with vaccines.”