Novartis AG, one of the world's fastest growing pharmaceutical companies, is determined to expand its business in China, firm officials say.

According to Daniel Vasella, chairman of the board and CEO, the Swiss firm will develop at high speed in the market in the next five to six years.

Strategies include recruiting more employees and enlarging the production scale of its plant located in the Changping district in suburban north Beijing.

The company plans to launch four new drugs in the Chinese market next year and plans to expand its sales market from big urban areas to the hinterlands, as well.

And, it will increase investment in research and development of new medicines in collaboration with Chinese scientists, Vasella said in a recent interview in Beijing.

One of the main purposes of expanding the Changping plant is to ensure the supply of coartemether, an anti-malaria medicine for patients in developing countries.

Coartemether was jointly developed by Chinese pharmaceutical scientists and Novartis AG in the early 1990s.

Through such cooperation, Novartis has so far applied for patents in more than 60 countries and regions worldwide for the drug.

And in 2002, coartemether was placed on the Essential Medicines Core List by the World Health Organization.

And last year, it was recommended by several international organizations and non-governmental organizations as part of an assistance program for poverty-stricken African countries where about a million people die from the effects of malaria each year.

The production scale at the Changping plant is expected to be increased to manufacture 60 million packages of coartemether next year. That is up from the previous 2 million packages, with most of the medicine to be sold at low prices to African countries, said Vasella.

To guarantee production growth, the company will help its Chinese suppliers of raw materials for the drug to upgrade the quality and quantity of their products.

Vasellar hopes strengthened cooperation may improve productivity and therefore reduce coartemether's cost to the benefit of patients in the developing world.

As for research on new medicines, Vasella mentioned the company has long attached importance to innovative medicines and has carried out extensive collaborations with its Chinese counterparts.

The firm has renewed its cooperative contract with the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences for another three years to extend joint research to develop natural herbal compounds.

During three years of previous cooperation with Novartis, SIMM has isolated 1,828 natural compounds from herbs.

Traditional Chinese medicine has been in use in China for so many thousands of years that it has become part of Chinese culture, yet it is not well understood in many other countries.

"We can take full advantage of modern technology to integrate traditional medicine with Western medicine," said Vasella.

Novartis has transferred its modern technology for research and development of new drugs to the institute. It also helps train Chinese researchers at Novartis headquarters in Switzerland.

(China Daily November 17, 2004)