On June 9, 2021, Frontera Therapeutics Co., Ltd. (‘Frontera’) held a groundbreaking ceremony to start the construction of its Suzhou facility in bioBAY of Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP), Jiangsu, China. President of Suzhou Frontera, Dr. Xinyan Li, hosted the leaders of SIP and bioBAY, representatives of investors, and other guests who participated in this ceremony. This 4,000-square-meter premises will house the GMP manufacturing cleanrooms for drug substance and drug product, the GMP quality control testing labs, the process development pilot plants, and the clinical testing labs. This facility is designed for the clinical manufacturing and the initial commercial manufacturing of Frontera’s rAAV gene therapy products.
Dr. Yong Dai, Co-Founder and CEO of Frontera expressed his gratitude to the leaders of SIPAC and bioBAY for their strong support as well as the investors for their trust. Dr. Dai pointed out that Frontera aspires to establish the cost-effective, scalable, local manufacturing platform in China to develop and produce high quality, affordably priced rAAV gene therapies for the China market. The emerging rAAV gene therapy industry in China is facing great challenges in Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC), including optimizing production process and expanding the production scale for the commercialization. Frontera has rapidly built up a world-class team with extensive experiences of the rAAV product development, consisting of research and preclinical development, CMC development and GMP manufacturing, clinical development, and regulatory filling talents. The team has been working collaboratively and has demonstrated amazing speed to achieve critical milestones of company’s rich pipeline programs.