Mayor Han Zheng attended a ceremony yesterday to mark Novartis' plan to build a US$100 millionresearch and development center in Shanghai's Zhangjiang High-Tech Park.
The Shanghai facility will become the pharmaceutical giant's first integrated research and development center in China, the Switzerland-based company said yesterday.
The new hub will be constructed in a biomedical R&D center in Shanghai's Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park. The new facility, scheduled to open in May 2007, will be the eighth site in Novartis' global research and development network.
The center will initially focus on infectious causes of cancer endemic to China and Asia, including liver cancer associated with hepatitis B. China now accounts for about one-third of the 400 million people infected with hepatitis B. Experts estimate that the virus kills 300,000 people on the Chinese mainland each year.
The research center will also conduct studies into traditional Chinese medicine.
"The Shanghai center will allow us to combine modern drug discovery approaches with those of traditional Chinese medicine that have been used to treat patients in China for thousands of years," said Daniel Vesella, the company's chairman and chief executive officer.
Novartis has been collaborating with the Shanghai Institute of Material Medica since 2000 to isolate natural products from traditional Chinese medicine.
Novartis operates seven companies in China, backed by US$265 million in total investment.
Its compound annual sales have grown more than 30 percent growth over the past five years in China.