Frontage Laboratories has established a joint venture with Zhejiang Jiuzhou Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. to provide enhanced access to high quality and economical API & intermediate development and manufacturing (CDMO) services to new US clients focused on New Chemical Entities (NCE) and vertically-integrated generic APIs that are developed through the combined efforts of Frontage and Jiuzhou. The venture, named FJ Pharma, LLC, will utilize Jiuzhou’s vast development and manufacturing infrastructures and experienced chemistry teams in China and Frontage’s API development team and CMC drug development services in the US. This relationship will help to efficiently support NCE development, more effectively reach clients interested in these services, and potentially offer vertically integrated finished products via Frontage’s affiliate drug product CDMO company, Frontida BioPharm, Inc. Jiuzhou and Frontage will continue to offer exceptional service to their existing clients following the formation of FJ Pharma.
Commenting on the JV formation, Ms. Lirong Hua, CEO of Jiuzhou said, “Jiuzhou continues to seek opportunities to improve and expand the depth of services Jiuzhou can provide to its worldwide pharmaceutical customer base. The FJ Pharma JV is an integral part of our forward-looking strategy to further enhance our ability to support many of our US-based business opportunities. The combination of Jiuzhou’s expertise in the manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and associated CDMO services - with the extensive formulation expertise and portfolio of support services available within Frontage Laboratories provides our customer base with the opportunity to access all the necessary services to accelerate their IND development programs and commercialization goals. We believe the FJ Pharma JV platform will serve as an incubator that nurtures some of our developmental phase enquiries from our US customer base, as well as a ‘bridge’ which links the skills of both organizations to provide seamless commercial supply chain options for selected customers and products”.
Dr. Song Li, Founder and CEO of Frontage stated, “The formation of FJ Pharma is an important milestone toward our goal to become a full service provider to our partners for their pharmaceutical products’ development. We are pleased to work with Jiuzhou in providing intermediates and APIs to clients. FJ Pharma’s API services will complement the high quality drug product development services offered by Frontage and CDMO services offered by Frontida, and provide our long-term clients integrated product development, manufacturing and commercial support.”