By Kirsty Needham, Andrew Silver
Sydney: Employees of pharmaceutical manufacturer WuXi AppTec, under US scrutiny for its links to the Chinese military, co-invented treatments for altitude sickness with scientists from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to public patent files and scientific articles reviewed by Reuters.
The news agency identified 10 patent filings citing six WuXi AppTec staff as co-inventors of altitude sickness drugs with six scientists from Beijing PLA General Hospital – the largest military medical school and China Research Center. The files, first reported by Reuters, were made in the United States, Europe and China between 2018 and 2023. Treatments for these diseases are a top priority for the PLA, which has fought alongside India – an increasingly important US security partner – as late as 2022 on their Himalayan border. The PLA said high-altitude illnesses, which include disorientation as well as fatal pulmonary and brain edema, are the main cause of reduced combat effectiveness of Chinese soldiers in these areas and may influence the results. of the war. The drug development ties go beyond the ties between WuXi AppTec and the PLA that have been publicly alleged by a US Congressional committee.
The House of Representatives Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party accused the Shanghai-based company, which reported U.S. sales of about $3.6 billion last year, of constituting a threat to Washington’s national security interests.
WuXi AppTec, which denies allegations that it poses a threat to US national security, said in a statement to Reuters that it “has not collaborated with the PLA General Hospital or any other PLA-related entity in the execution of this work” and that she has “no particular link” with the Chinese army.
The company said its employees were listed in the patent documents because they had previously “invented compounds related to the treatment of hypertension” while conducting research for a client, Shijiazhuang Sagacity New Drug Development.
Sagacity included the compounds “in a subsequent project that we had no knowledge of and did not involve our company or employees,” WuXi AppTec said.
Sagacity, whose founder was the legal representative of a company acquired by WuXi parent AppTec in 2016, told Reuters it was independent of WuXi AppTec but cooperated with it on some services. She did not respond to questions about who invented the patent.
China’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the PLA’s relationship with WuXi AppTec.
Kunlun He, a senior official at the PLA General Hospital, lead author of the studies behind the patented treatments and co-inventor, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
PATENT TRAIL
Reuters found two documents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office dated March 2021 that show WuXi AppTec’s six employees assigned the rights to the patents to Sagacity and PLA General Hospital.
When asked about the documents, WuXi AppTec said it was “standard patent application practice” to assign rights to applicants and that neither the company nor the six employees owned these patents.
In a June 2022 study on altitude sickness treatments, He, the scientist who led PLA General Hospital’s altitude research efforts, thanked the WuXi AppTec team for “discussions useful regarding the launch and promotion” of a high-level defense scientific project financed by Beijing.
Republican U.S. lawmaker John Moolenaar, who chairs the congressional committee, said the Reuters findings “only add to the urgent need for Congress” to pass a bill that would prevent U.S. agencies and companies from cooperate with some biotechnology companies, including WuXi AppTec. “People forget that public health has been handled largely by the PLA,” said Anna Puglisi, a former U.S. counterintelligence official specializing in biotechnology and China, who reviewed the Reuters findings.
China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement responding to questions from Reuters that many well-known U.S. companies also have ties to the U.S. military.
He said Washington should “stop overextending the concept of national security” and “stop politicizing, instrumentalizing and weaponizing technology and trade issues.”
MILITARY RESEARCHERS
Reuters also identified seven people listed in research papers or scientific seminar materials as being graduate students or researchers at Shanghai Naval Medical University while they were employees of WuXi AppTec. Sheng Chunquan, a four-star military officer who heads the university’s school of pharmacy, wrote in a 2021 article in China’s Journal of Pharmaceutical Practice and Service that he trains “military pharmacy” researchers in the part of a plan created by the Communist Party’s top military officials. body. Sheng, whose drug development work was previously recognized with a WuXi AppTec Award, said in a 2016 interview — recently deleted from the company’s social media account — that cooperation between the company and university “would greatly promote the process of R&D and launch of new drugs”. “.
University officials did not respond to emails or faxes seeking comment.
A Reuters review of more than a dozen scientific papers found that at least three Navy Medical University graduate students hired by WuXi AppTec in Shanghai during the same period also worked on projects related to cancer treatments. pain relief and an antibiotic for WuXi AppTec customers in the United States, Europe and Canada, including Novartis.
A Novartis spokeswoman told Reuters the Swiss company would not disclose details of its third-party collaboration but was “committed to conducting its business in a fully compliant manner.”
WuXi AppTec said that all military medical universities in China recruit civilian students. The company also said its internal security controls prevent unauthorized employee access to labs and files and that all employees have signed agreements that “prohibit them from sharing company data or intellectual property.” with third parties, including for the purposes of academic research and/or graduate studies. “
Puglisi, now an assistant professor at Georgetown University, said Chinese companies were required by a 2017 law – which says they must “assist and cooperate with the intelligence work of the state” – to share information at the request of authorities “regardless of the owner of this intellectual property”. “
WuXi AppTec said the law was “subject to substantive and procedural restrictions” and that Beijing has not asked it to “provide any proprietary data or confidential information in connection with this law.”
($1 = 7.2330 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Kirsty Needham, Andrew Silver and Michael Martina; editing by Miyoung Kim and Katerina Ang)
