SHANGHAI - Eli Lilly and Chinese active pharmaceutical ingredient provider Hisun recently announced the completion of a technology transfer under which Lilly transferred technology to Hisun to produce finished products and API of its tuberculosis drug capreomycin.

As a part of Lilly's Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) project, Lilly has transferred technologies to produce capreomycin and another TB drug cycloserine to seven partners around the world.

Those partners include Akorn and Chao Center in the U.S., Aspen Pharmacare in South Africa, Shasun Chemicals and Drugs in India, SIA International/Biocom in Russia, Vianex S.A in Greece and Hisun in China, according to Lilly spokeswoman Monica Chang.

"Lilly made these transfers for free ... Hisun's products will be sold under Hisun's brand," said Chang, who works from Lilly's Beijing site.

"Lilly has the intention to expand the collaboration with Hisun [for other outsourcing manufacturing deals]," Chang added, but declined to disclose more details.

China has the second-largest number of patients with TB, second to India. In 2008, roughly 4.5 million patients were infected with TB in China. Eighty percent of China's TB patients are in rural areas and 40 percent of them are drug resistant, 10 percent of whom are multi-drug resistant.

Hisun, which is based in Taizhou, a coastal city in Southeastern China, has more than 3,000 employees and has become one of the biggest manufacturing bases for antibiotics and oncology products. In 2000, the company became a publicly listed company on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Hisun manufactures 18 products approved by U.S. FDA such as cholesterol drug lovastatin, parasite treatment ivermectin and antibiotic bleomycin.

The cooperation agreement between Lilly and Hisun began in 2003 with an agreement to transfer technology for API production of capreomycin. Hisun completed the API technology transfer and validation process in 2006.

Hisun's production line is under construction and the company will have the capacity to produce 5 million doses of capreomycin to the world every year once the production lines are completed later this year.

Huahai, another API provider in China, recently announced an expanded collaboration with Merck to produce HIV drugs (Also see "Merck Expands Outsourcing With Zhejiang Huahai For HIV Finished Product Manufacturing" - Scrip, 15 March, 2010.).

Driven by its cost advantage and increasing medical need from healthcare reforms at home and abroad, the contract manufacturing industry in China is experiencing an annual growth rate of close to 23 percent in 2010, predicts Frost & Sullivan (Also see "China's Contract Manufacturing Growth Tied To Losses In The West" - Scrip, 16 March, 2010.).

-Dai Jialing (j.dai@elsevier.com)

Lilly And China's Hisun Complete Technology Transfer For Antibiotic Capreomycin For TB

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