Apeloa Pharmaceutical, a leading international drug developer and manufacturer, has recently opened its first US R&D center, stretching over 17,000 square feet in Billerica, Massachusetts.

The state-of-the-art facility provides clients internationally with services including preclinical chemistry route exploration, scale-up for kilogram-scale production, and new modality platform development for PROTAC, ADC, and peptide synthesis.

The new R&D center serves Apeloa Pharma Solutions, the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) arm of Zhejiang-based public listed pharmaceutical company Apeloa Pharmaceutical Co. ("Apeloa").

A Boston-based team of experienced scientists with strong biotech backgrounds will support the team in navigating the evolving chemistry needs of drug development. The lab also underscores Apeloa's commitment to technological advancement and strategic partnerships and is a pivotal milestone in the company's internationalization efforts.

Located in greater Boston, the global hub of scientific innovation, the new center has been built according to the international pharmaceutical industry's most stringent quality and technical standards for pharmaceutical research.

Apeloa marked the occasion with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, followed by a tour of its new premises to officially inaugurate the center on September 10. In attendance were Apeloa leaders, local government representatives, local team members and nearly 100 partners and friends from the pharmaceutical and biotech community.

Apeloa Pharma Solutions CEO Lei Shu expressed deep gratitude for "not only our local team but also Apeloa associates from around the world" for the successful opening of the lab. When the team initially began its search for the R&D center, he said, they found "very little well-equipped chemistry spaces to let us provide quantitative chemistry services," he explained. "So after several months of lab hunting we decided to build this lab ourselves. [It] took us almost two years to complete. Happily, today I say that we've done this job," Shu announced.

Brian Zhu, Chairman and CEO of Apeloa Pharmaceutical, celebrated "the grand ceremony of APS today as symbolizing a larger significant milestone" in Apeloa's journey towards globalization, he said during the ceremony. "Apeloa will continue to dedicate our services to the advancement of our manufacturing capabilities," he pledged, "providing better services to our clients and establishing long term and strategic relationships with our customers."

The Apeloa Pharma Solutions R&D Center joins an impressive lineup of Apeloa's existing R&D centers, manufacturing sites, specialized capability facilities, bio-production sites, finished dosage form (FDF) sites, and safety and testing centers. Aside from Boston’s R&D Center for Apeloa’s CDMO Division, three other R&D sites are located in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Hengdian headquarters, providing R&D services for Apeloa’s CDMO, FDF and API Divisions.

Apeloa's R&D technology platforms consist of flow chemistry, synthetic biology and biocatalysis, highly potent compound, peptide, TPD & PROTAC service platforms and more. Its one-stop chemistry service offers discovery chemistry, process R&D on toxicity batches, toxicity sample formulation, internal transfer, as well as pilot, engineering, and validation support. Strong overlaps in process chemistry and engineering in early stages also reduces the chemistry hurdle from toxicity batch to clinical batch, greatly accelerating the development process.

A top player in the global pharmaceutical industry for over 30 years, Apeloa is acutely focused on delivering responsive and flexible services to its clients. The company takes pride in its IP protection capacity, ensuring the highest levels of employee, project and information management, to best look out for its clients' interests.

Kevin McDonell, US VP of Chemistry at Bicycle Therapeutics, an Apeloa client who also happens to be Shu's neighbor, commended Apeloa not only for its "very high level of technical skill, very good chemists," but also "leadership in [their] company that care about doing stuff the right way," McDonnell said at the ceremony. "I think that's going to permeate through to how this organization runs, and that's going to lead to really good collaborations and really good success for the future."

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