The UK-headquartered contract research organisation (CRO) announced the move this week, explaining that the aim is to expand its customer base and deepen established relationships with companies in Asia.
CEO Andrew Reason said: “We are an international CRO, performing a comprehensive range of characterization services from fully-equipped, modern laboratories in both the UK and USA. Asia is an important aspect of our expansion plans.”
He also suggested companies developing biosimilars in Asia would welcome the chance to work with an experienced CRO.
“The structural characterization of biopharmaceutical products is a broad and complicated process and a wide variety of techniques are involved in providing full characterization information.
“For these reasons, I believe that our industry values proven technical expertise and product experience when selecting a CRO partner, especially when important decisions relating to comparability or biosimilarity are to be made.”
News of the expansion plan comes just under a year after BioPharmaSpec opened a new characterization services laboratory in the US.
Singapore lab mulled
The facility in Malvern, Pennsylvania, in the greater Philadelphia area, provides de novo Protein Sequencing, Peptide Mapping, Disulfide Bridge and Carbohydrate Analysis.
Lindsay Farrell, head of business development, told us: “We are currently assessing the requirement for a lab in the region and are in particular exploring an option we have in Singapore.
“The expansion of our business development capabilities, in order to build upon the client base we have already established in the region, is part of this process and we look forward to using our technical expertise and regulatory experience to help accelerate our Asian clients’ products through the development pipeline.”