Beijing-based Sino Biological already provides recombinant proteins, antibodies, and other materials and contract research services to customers in Asia, Europe, and North America but has previously lacked a manufacturing plant in the US.
To strengthen its presence in the country, the service provider has signed a lease with the real estate investment, development, and property manager Hines for around 10,000 square feet of commercial lab and office space and begun construction of a bioprocessing facility at the site in Texas. The new facility will support product manufacture and contract services, as Rob Burgess, Sino Biological’s chief business officer, explained.
“Our new site at the Levit Green master-planned district in the heart of Houston’s Texas Medical Center will enable Sino Biological to considerably expand its research services and bioreagent manufacture capabilities into the United States,” said Burgess.
Levit Green is a 53-acre site that is next door to Texas Medical Center. The site, which Hines is creating with 2ML Real Estate Interests, features 290,000 square feet of laboratory and office space. Occupancy is set to start in the fourth quarter. Sino Biological’s facility is part of the first phase of the Levit Green project.
Yingmin Zhu, formerly an assistant professor at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, is heading up Sino Biological’s bioprocessing center. Zhu has already assembled a team that is working to establish the center in Houston.
The US expansion comes 15 months after the service provider raised 4,980m yuan ($695m) by listing its shares on the ChiNext board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Since then, the company has expanded through initiatives including the investment of 150m yuan in a new subsidiary focused on biological reagents at Taizhou China Medical City Park.