RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:USA Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) 2022 Re: Biotech and China May 01, 2024 - Amid a U.S. biosecurity crackdown targeting certain Chinese manufacturers and contract research organizations, production specialist WuXi Biologics has quietly exited what is perhaps the biotech industry’s biggest event of the year.
WuXi Bio “will not have a presence” at the 2024 BIO International Convention in June, a spokesperson at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization has confirmed.
WuXi Bio’s withdrawal from the BIO convention comes at a point of heightened tension between Chinese biopharma service providers and certain U.S. lawmakers.
Back in January, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party unveiled the BIOSECURE Act, which aims to prevent so-called “foreign adversary biotechs” from receiving U.S. federal funding for their projects. The bill, if made law, would likely limit the ability of drugmakers participating in Medicare and Medicaid to work with those companies of concern, effectively cutting them out of the U.S. market.
The draft legislation specifically calls out WuXi AppTec as well as Chinese genomics companies BGI Group, MGI and Complete Genomics, and could add more companies to the target list later. According to the bill, the identified companies allegedly pose a risk to U.S. national security by “engaging in joint research with, being supported by, or being affiliated with a foreign adversary’s military, internal security forces, or intelligence agencies.”
WuXi AppTec and WuXi Bio are related companies but operate as distinct entities.
The lawmakers specifically accused WuXi Bio’s CEO, Chen Zhisheng, of having military ties, through a 2018 resume that lists him as a visiting professor at China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences.
A few weeks after BIO made its position known, Crowley penned an opinion piece in Stat claiming “global competitors are now threatening America’s biotechnology dominance.”
“If China becomes the world leader in biotechnology by 2035, as it intends to do, it will control the availability of disease treatment and genetic information,” Crowley warned. “This supremacy would expand its global economic influence while reshaping the global order to its interests.”
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/wuxi-biologics-withdraws-2024-bio-convention-following-sister-companys-exit-trade-group