WuXi Biologics Suzhou, China, facility.
Dr. Chris Chen, chief executive officer of WuXi Biologics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., has been confirmed as final keynote speaker for the 2018 Annual Meeting & Expo of the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) taking place in Philadelphia, November 4–7.
WuXi Biologics, with more than 2,800 employees, is an open-access integrated monoclonal antibodies discovery, development, and manufacturing platform serving global companies.
In April the company announced plans to invest nearly $400 million and create 400 new jobs over five years in a new biologics drug substance manufacturing facility in Ireland. In May, the company detailed plans to invest some $60 million to establish a biologics manufacturing facility in Singapore. Then in June, WuXi Biologics announced that it will invest another $60 million and hire approximately 150 employees to establish its eleventh global drug substance manufacturing facility, this one in Worcester, Massachusetts.
At the time, Chen indicated the moves were a critical part of the WuXi’s plans to build its global biomanufacturing network and supply chain to benefit patients worldwide.
In Chen’s keynote presentation at ISPE, he is expected to address advancements in biologics, sharing insights on how WuXi Biologics has forged new paths for the development, manufacturing, and delivery of cutting-edge therapies.
Chen has nearly 20 years of experience in bioprocess development, scale-up, manufacturing, and quality. He formerly served as CEO of Shanghai Kanda; COO of Shanghai Celgen; Director of Process Science & Production at AME (now Eli Lilly), Manager of BioProcess Technology at Merck. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware.
WuXi Biologics originally was established in 2010 as one of the WuXi AppTec business units. In 2015, WuXi Biologics was incorporated and in June 2017, WuXi Biologics went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) becoming one of the top 10 IPOs on the HKEX that year. The company is headquartered in China’s Wuxi city, Jiangsu province.
The 2018 ISPE Annual Meeting & Expo in November will feature six tracks that include more than 50 education sessions and five technical workshops on equipment reliability, data integrity strategy and implementation, descriptive statistics for pharma, lifecycle process validation, and site master planning.
In addition, the expo will showcase more than 300 companies offering advanced technologies and services. Additional registration and program information is available at www.ISPE.org/Conferences/2018-Annual-Meeting-Expo.
(Source: ISPE; Images courtesy WuXi Biologics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.)
