Covance drops deal for Chinese research center

Covance is abandoning its recent partnership deal with WuXi Pharmatech to build a 323,000-square foot research center in China. Instead of chipping in $30 million on that deal, the big CRO says now that it will go it alone. No timeline was given on how fast it plans to move.

"We expect China will become an attractive region for outsourced drug development services over the longer-term," Covance chief executive Joe Herring said in a statement. "To seize this opportunity, we will pursue our original strategy to build our own world-class preclinical facility in the region and aggressively compete as the global market leader in a business we know very well."

- here's Covance's release
- read the report from the Star-Ledger

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