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Even as GlaxoSmithKline has opened its most advanced manufacturing site in Asia, it is selling an older plant in China to Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical.

Fosun Pharma announced that it has a deal with GSK to buy its Suzhou pharmaceutical factory in east China near Shanghai for ¥250 million ($36 million), China.org reports. Fosun, among China’s largest drugmakers, said the plant produced revenue of ¥656.1 million ($94.4 million) last year.

The Chinese drugmaker also is getting the rights to produce GSK’s older chronic hepatitis B and HIV drug lamivudine.

Lamivudine is the active ingredient in GSK’s HIV and hepatitis drug Epivir, which GSK now uses in its combo HIV meds. But with the opening of GSK’s new continuous manufacturing facilities at its site in Singapore, it now has the ability to make APIs like lamivudine faster and more inexpensively.

The U.K. drugmaker Monday announced the opening of a $95 million continuous manufacturing complex in Singapore. One part of the operation will make APIs for HIV drugs such as dolutegravir, a combo of Tivicay (dolutegravir, DTG) and Epivir (lamivudine, 3TC).

The manufacturing method puts ingredients through a series of heaters, spinners, extractors and other equipment to achieve an enzymatic result instead of using batches and chemical reactions. The plants are smaller, faster and cheaper, use far less energy and produce far less waste. .

GSK said the first new drug to be manufactured using the enzymatic process will be daprodustat, a new oral treatment for anemia associated with chronic kidney disease. It also is using continuous processing in a part of a pilot plant that makes APIs for clinical trials.

By Eric Palmer

Source: Fierce Pharma