A groundswell of government support and an influx of western influence have helped to rapidly accelerate the sector
There’s nothing new in the fact that pharmaceutical companies are working without borders, seeking to capitalise on technologies and resources anywhere in the world that advances a sector constantly moving forward in search of innovation.
And, given the support of the likes of giants such as Roche, Pfizer, GSK and Novo Nordisk, China has become the epicentre for a biopharma sector on the move. There are many reasons why, not least the extensive range of benefits the region can offer. In the past nine years, the Chinese government has doubled its support for biotech, investing heavily to stimulate the sort of innovation that will not only meet huge domestic healthcare needs but to grow its reputation on the world stage.
Between 2017 and 2021 alone, China recorded the largest number of new trials with the number of new trials doubling, many involving western companies.
Another incentive for western biotechs on the move has been the effect of the country’s 2018 regulatory reforms which have helped to accelerate drug approvals in the country, thereby leading to faster development, all of which has increased global recognition. According to a recent Novotech/GlobalData report, those reforms “allow acceptance of foreign clinical trials data for drug approval, making it easier for foreign companies to enter the Chinese market.
China’s clinical development regulations are aligned with the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) regulations and present several benefits to western biopharma companies”. More recently, patent reforms, including the introduction of patent term extensions for drugs and the patent term compensation system, are also likely to appeal to foreign companies.
China has become a fundamental part of our industry globally in terms of innovation. It has become a very important country and we believe it will remain a very important country for us and for the entire industry
Then there is the abundance of skills, something that has its roots in locally-produced talent and those returning from studying overseas, the level of corporate-academic collaborations and, of course, the sheer size and diversity of its patient population. Western companies can take advantage of the Marketing Authorisation Holder designation as a way of gaining access to the Chinese market without needing to set up their own manufacturing facilities.
Astrazeneca is a case in point. CEO Pascale Soriot told Bloomberg: “China has become a fundamental part of our industry globally in terms of innovation. It has become a very important country and we believe it will remain a very important country for us and for the entire industry. You have enormous innovation and a very strong focus of the government on building life sciences as well.”
The company, with its global R&D centre in Shanghai, first established a presence in China in 1993 and now employs more than 14,000 people in medical research in five offices and two manufacturing plants. It has brought 30
innovative drugs to the country and has invested around three-quarters of a billion dollars in pharmaceutical innovation.
The country is now widely regarded as a breeding ground for pharma excellence and ingenuity with a market expected to be worth over €150 billion this year
Shortly before Christmas, executives at Roche announced they were stepping up their efforts to tap into what they called the potential of China’s personalised healthcare market. China is one of the most forward-thinking countries in the world when it comes to AI and digitalisation, something not lost on Bian Xin, CEO of its China operation. She said one attraction was the way China has taken the lead in developing digital economy and the way that would accelerate adoption of digital-empowered personalised healthcare solutions. This paved the way for acceleration of key areas such as lab insights, clinical workflow optimisation, clinical decision support and patient monitoring.
Li Bin, vice-president of Medical Affairs and PHC at Roche Pharma China, said the company hoped to provide not only medicines and diagnostic products, but to develop digital tools and services for personalised healthcare. “Based on technologies including big data and algorithms, digital tools could form a holistic solution together with medicines and diagnostic products to better benefit patients,” he said.
Collaborations are also helping, especially when it comes to the cost-effectiveness of Big Pharma tapping into local distribution. Merck, for example, used Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products to market its HPV shot Gardasil in China. GSK turned to them to distribute Shingrix, its shingles vaccine. And Pfizer recently disclosed a deal which gave Shanghai Pharma subsidiary, Keyuan Pharma, exclusive rights to distribute and promote its pneumococcal vaccine Prevenar 13 in the country.
It’s no surprise, given that the country is now widely regarded as a breeding ground for pharma excellence and ingenuity with a market expected to be worth over €150 billion this year.
In a global industry which recorded sales of $4.7 trillion in 2022, China now is now leading the world in terms of chemicals industry sales, accounting for more than 40 per cent of the global market, with much of this in basic chemicals, making the credible rivals of the long-established US giants.
Companies are investing significantly in China. In 2022, 46 per cent of global chemical industry capital investment was located in China, with just 10 per cent in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).