(Yicai) Jan. 23 -- China's Jiuzhou Pharmaceutical will invest USD42 million to establish a platform to provide research and development services in Japan to help overseas clients develop innovative drugs.

It will take two years to set up the contract research organization platform in Fujisawa, the Taizhou-headquartered company announced yesterday. Jiuzhou's Singapore-based unit Raybow Life Sciences will establish a project company in Japan to take care of funding, building, and operating the platform.

The move should help Jiuzhou enhance its efficiency, participate in foreign clients' research and development pipelines at an earlier stage, attract more client resources and orders, and lure more international talents to join the team, the firm added.

Jiuzhou is a contract development and manufacturing organization that assists other medical companies in developing and manufacturing new drugs. It counts Swiss pharma giants Novartis and Roche, pet medicine firm Zoetis, California-based Gilead Sciences, and Japan's Daiichi Sankyo as some of its clients, according to the 2022 earnings report.

Shares of Jiuzhou [SHA: 603456] closed up by 1.2 percent to CNY19.86 (USD2.80) today.

Editor: Emmi Laine