NEWS OF THE WEEK
MERCK PLANS R&D CENTER IN CHINA PHARMACEUTICALS: Beijing will be U.S. firm’s R&D headquarters in Asia NEWSCOM
China’s health care market offers big opportunities for Merck & Co.
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ERCK & CO. will spend $1.5 billion on R&D in
China over the next five years, with a big chunk of the cash going to build a facility in Beijing that will become the U.S. company’s R&D headquarters for Asia. By 2014, Merck expects to complete the construction of R&D facilities in Beijing’s Wangjing Park with more than 500,000 sq ft of space. By then, Merck will have 600 people in Beijing working in drug discovery, translational research, clinical development, regulatory affairs, and management of outsourced research programs. The company expects to further expand its Beijing R&D facilities after 2014. At a press conference in Beijing, Ruiping Dong, a Merck senior vice president in charge of R&D in emerging markets, said one of the goals of the new R&D center is to facilitate the approval of Merck products by Chinese regulators. Peter Kim, president of Merck
ANTIREGULATORY ACTION CONGRESS: House passes bills to
restrict federal rule-making
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIV ES
L
Smith
ED BY REPUBLICANS seeking to pare back
government, the House of Representatives this month passed three bills to restrict federal agencies’ ability to regulate. The measures will help create jobs, their supporters assert. Opponents counter that the bills will harm the public by curtailing health, safety, and environmental protections. H.R. 3010 would have the broadest effect of the three bills. It would add layers of procedures to those that agencies already must follow before issuing a rule. Plus, it would provide more opportunities for legal challenges to regulations. Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and sponsor of H.R. 3010, says the legislation “will help free up small businesses and employers to spend more, invest more, and produce more to create more jobs for American workers.” But the White House says the measure, which the House passed on Dec. 1, “would impose unnecessary new procedures on agencies and invite frivolous litigation.” WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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Research Laboratories, added that Beijing was selected over Shanghai partly because it is the Chinese government’s decision center. Merck has been conducting R&D in China for years. In 2005, it established a lab in Beijing that now employs 300 scientists who manage clinical data. Moreover, Merck is one of the major customers of China’s numerous contract research organizations, or CROs. Because of its reliance on CROs, Merck’s R&D presence in China so far has been mostly “virtual,” notes Greg Scott, CEO of ChinaBio, a company that advises investors about China’s biotech sector. “Perhaps they have felt some pressure [from the Chinese government] to set up a brick-and-mortar R&D lab,” he says. It is quite likely that Merck was offered attractive terms by Wangjing Park, an emerging research cluster that actively promotes itself to potential investors, Scott adds. “Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park is the most established location in China, but it is less aggressive in its promotion,” he says. A few companies have already selected Beijing to conduct pharmaceutical R&D. Novo Nordisk set up an R&D center in the Chinese capital about 10 years ago. More recently, the oncology start-up BeiGene chose Beijing as its headquarters. Several of China’s top universities and government research institutes are in Beijing.—JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY
Also, H.R. 3010 would require that agencies, in most cases, adopt the least costly regulatory option. Although sounding “seductively simple,” this provision would allow businesses to stymie rule-making by offering endless proposals for less costly alternatives, says Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who opposed the bill. The second bill, H.R. 10, would require Senate and House approval of major regulations—those with an annual impact on the economy of $100 million or more— before they could take effect. The sponsor of H.R. 10, Rep. Geoff Davis (R-Ky.), says the bill, which passed on Dec. 7, “will ensure congressional accountability for the regulations that have the greatest impact on our economy.” However, Congress does not have the resources or time to ensure that needed regulations will take effect, says the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards. H.R. 10 would lead to politics rather than scientific judgments driving regulation, says the organization, which is composed of consumer, labor, scientific, faith, health, and environmental groups. The third bill, H.R. 527, would require agencies to conduct more analysis of the impact of planned regulations on small businesses than is currently required. The House passed it on Dec. 1. The three bills now move to the Senate, where they face an uphill battle, according to activist groups. White House advisers are recommending that President Barack Obama veto the measures if the Senate passes them.—CHERYL HOGUE
DECEMBER 12, 2011
