CR Pharma Signs Strategic Cooperation Agreement with Crystec
2017-05-11,CR Pharmaceutical

On May 9, China Resources Pharmaceutical (CR Pharma) entered a strategic cooperation agreement with the UK company Crystec at the UK Department of International Trade. The agreement was jointly signed off by Wang Chuncheng, CR Pharma’s Assistant General Manager, and Peter York, Crystec’s Chief Scientist and Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. According to the agreement, both parties will work jointly on the "China-UK Research & Innovation Bridge Program-Development of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).” The plan is to build a platform for cooperation in research & development of technology, and the focus will be to apply supercritical technology to product improvement and innovation.

The China-UK Research & Innovation Bridge Program was established in 2016 by the Ministry of Science and Technology in China, and Innovate UK in the United Kingdom. Following the successful visit of President Xi Jinping to the United Kingdom, the program is one of the most bilateral technological cooperative projects implemented by the two governments. With proactive guidance and funding from both governments, the program aims to assist Chinese and UK entities and academic institutions to foster strategic platforms to develop technologies and products in a range of critical fields.

Reported jointly by Crystec and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, the planned cooperation project between CR Pharma and Crystec from the UK has been formally approved with a total funding of £2.2 million. As the contractor of the program, CR Pharma will make a joint investment with Crystec to commercialize the program at an appropriate milestone stage. CR Pharma will enjoy the preemptive right to the project.

Crystec is a UK-based high-tech pharma company applying state-of-art supercritical fluid (SCF) technologies in the field of crystal and particle engineering. As a next step, the two companies will establish a cooperative development platform. The aim of which will be to utilize the SCF technologies of Crystec to meet the drug development needs of CR Pharma with the belief that such in-depth, cooperative collaboration will lead to the improvement of existing drugs, improvement in the R&D of innovative products and the re-evaluation of the safety and effectiveness of solid preparation drugs including traditional Chinese medicine formula particles. Ultimately, this cooperative endeavor aims to achieve the optimization and upgrade of the drug products of CR Pharma.