Its fast-moving, cut-price drugmakers stand to make more money abroad than at home
After america, China is the world’s largest developer of new medicines and its companies ran about a third of the planet’s clinical trials last year. That is up from just 5% a decade before (see chart 1). It is also rising to the forefront in critical areas of research, such as those relating to cancer. Investors have taken note. Shares in Chinese biotech companies have surged by 110% this year, more than three times as much as their American peers.
For much of the past century drug discovery was dominated by Western firms, the companies collectively often called “big pharma”. No longer. These companies face some of the steepest “patent cliffs” in their history, as drugs expected to generate more than $300bn in total revenue over the next six years will lose their patent protection by 2030. To plug the gap, big American and European firms are scouring the globe for promising molecules, and increasingly, it is finding them in China.
The timing is awkward. America wants to reduce its reliance on Chinese supply chains, since it remains in a trade war that is only temporarily on hold. The government frets already about China’s chokehold on active drug ingredients, for example. And rumours fly around that the White House plans to crack down on Chinese pharma, though nothing has happened so far. Yet when it comes to creating the next generation of medicines, America’s drugmakers, and its patients, are likely to become more, not less, dependent on Chinese innovation.
Cancer remains a central focus for Chinese firms, but they are also branching out. Weight-loss drugs are a hot target. Patents on semaglutide—the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic, the wildly popular weight-loss treatments made by Novo Nordisk, a Danish pharma giant—are due to expire in China next year. That has sparked a rush to prepare generics. Yet local firms are not just copying. Bloomberg Intelligence, a research firm, reckons there are 160 new obesity drugs in development worldwide; about a third of them are Chinese.
There is a lot of innovation in all fields of science happening at an accelerating rate in China. Like a good cover band, finding their own voice and going from covering Led Zeppelin to becoming Heart!
We desperately need more competition in the USA pharmaceuticals market so this could be good, but I bet it gets blocked by politicians paid by the USA pharmaceuticals industry.
China Ramps Up Experiments on Animals to Help Win Biotech Race
On today’s Big Take Asia podcast we look at cutting-edge experiments on large animals in China in a bid to develop new drugs.
China is investing heavily in cutting-edge genetic experiments. It’s part of their quest to become a biotech superpower.
On today’s Big Take Asia Podcast, host K. Oanh Ha, Bloomberg’s Karoline Kan and Oxford University geneticist Andy Greenfield discuss China’s pharmaceutical ambitions and the loose regulatory environment that allows the animal testing industry to thrive.
Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to phase out medical research involving monkeys as early as the end of the year, Science magazine reported, and while animal-rights advocates and medical ethicists praised the move, others questioned whether alternative methods are effective and what will happen to current test subjects.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy earlier this year signaled his intent to end animal testing for drugs and chemicals as the National Institutes of Health begins shifting to lab-grown 3D tissue models for research. The rollback on using animals for research is part of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement and one supported by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Meanwhile, some medical experts have warned that research could be compromised if the government moves too fast on ending animal testing.
Yes, but I trust medication products Russia (for quality control, etc.) much less than virtually any other country; it’s such a corrupt country (without a functioning legal system) so there is not much incentive to make a high quality product. IMHO.
Yep, hard NO on drugs developed in Russia. The corruption is so extensive that without multiple replicating trials in several Western countries, I would reject them out of hand, no questions asked. It’s like fishing in the municipal pool hoping to catch a bluefin tuna for dinner - not happening.
Yep. As for China, as much as I dislike them, they can do quality science, and the penalties for fraud etc are pretty harsh, and are actively enforced. IMO, if these drugs are developed and sold locally, they’re probably legit. If they’re for export only, then I’d be very suspicious.
However, one major problem is that any Chinese clinical trial will have mostly recruited Han Chinese, so how the drugs will function in caucasian, African, European etc ethnicities may be less well known than a drug tested in the US or Europe. (Of course, they have similar issues where most of our trials might only have a small number of East Asians, and they are (anecdotally, to my knowledge) more susceptible to side effects)
The debate surrounding the use of generic drugs began in December, when authorities announced the list of nearly 200 companies that had won contracts to sell medicines to Chinese state hospitals. Almost all were domestic makers of generic pharmaceuticals.
This intensified in January, when, in a video interview that went viral, the director of a hospital department in Shanghai, shared his concerns about the drug procurement system.
Zheng Minhua cited “antibiotics that cause allergies, blood pressure that won’t go down, anaesthetised patients who won’t sleep” and laxatives that did not clear the bowel as being among the issues that had been encountered.
Dr Zheng’s words immediately struck a chord and have been condensed into a social media slogan that has been viewed by millions in the past month - though much of the discussion of the topic has since been censored on Weibo. Many people have come forward to share their own bad experiences with alleged substandard drugs.
“I underwent intestinal surgeries in 2024, which required me to consume laxatives beforehand,” one Weibo user wrote. They said the drugs they were given had “no effect whatsoever”, even after the dose was doubled, and that they had to turn to drinking coffee to help clear their bowel.
Yes, broadly speaking, lots of issues in the Chinese supply chains when it comes to drugs, chemicals and biologics… everything needs to be verified by an independent 3rd party (preferably in North America or Europe based labs).
Yes, fraud is epic in China. But if a Chinese biotech hopes to have a successful new drug, it will necessarily have to be replicated and moved through regulatory agencies in the West. I’m certainly not going to hop on a plane to China to take some dodgy drug, no matter the promise. Competition is good. There’s no reason why humanity should not avail itself of all resources and talent (verified). I’m glad more eyes and money is focused on the field.
I’m tired of the lack of leadership in U.S science. They don’t have anyone like Singapore’s LKY, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, Manhattan Project’s Leslie Groves. Operation Warp Speed was the last one (what was the leadership here?). If the U.S makes it by on this front, it’s by sheer luck or AI, or O’Neill was better than expected.
If only the the CCP would address the issue of ‘TOFU_DREG’ …I am more than hesitant about taking any drugs manufactured there given their almost total lack of oversight.
But, the US will find itself there soon… …the current administration has gutted most oversight by the FDA, DoA, and all other sectors… ad nauseam. And, is pardoning all those corporate leaders who have been sentences for these crimes. No consequences for poisoning our population