Commonwealth Biotechnologies Lands Strategic Investor
Commonwealth Biotechnologies, Inc. (CBI), of Richmond, Virginia, announced that Venturepharm Laboratories Ltd (VPL) has become a cornerstone investor through the purchase of 2.15M shares from PharmAust Ltd, which represents 39% of CBI’s issued share capital. Concurrent with VPL’s investment in CBI, the two companies have established a joint venture (”Venturepharm Asia”) for CBI to leverage Venturepharm’s extensive clinical research capabilities in China in order to provide a comprehensive suite of outsourcing services to the global pharmaceutical outsourcing industry. According to CBI, the establishment of the joint venture will create the first fully integrated, U.S.-China based pharmaceutical contract research organization.
Dr. Paul D’Sylva, CEO of CBI, said “In establishing this partnership with VPL, CBI is taking account of China’s growing importance in drug discovery and development. Venturepharm Asia brings together the best of what the West and the East can offer in the pharmaceutical outsourcing industry by providing fast, secure, high quality, and innovative services at globally competitive prices.” He added, “Of the estimated $34 billion in global life sciences outsourcing expenditure in 2005, 60% was spent on contract manufacturing, 33% on clinical research and 7% on custom chemical synthesis. The JV is of enormous strategic value to CBI because it builds upon our high quality custom synthesis products and services and enables us to expand our suite of services into the large and growing market segments of contract manufacturing and clinical trial management.”
CBI offers research and development products and services to the global life sciences industry. CBI now operates five distinct business units: (1) CBI Services, a discovery phase contract research organization; (2) Fairfax Identity Laboratories, a DNA reference business; (3) Mimotopes Pty, Ltd, Melbourne, Australia, a peptide and discovery chemistry business; (4) Exelgen, Ltd, Bude, UK, a medicinal and synthetic discovery chemistry business; and (5) Venturepharm Asia, Beijing, China, a contract research joint venture specializing in process scale-up, formulation development, cGMP manufacturing and clinical trial management. Collectively, CBI companies directly employs over 100 staff in world-class laboratories and indirectly has access to over 2,000 staff through its Venturepharm Asia joint venture.
For more information, visit CBI on the web at www.cbi-biotech.com.
