Yeah, though anything out of China I want to see replicated. Everything should be replicated everywhere, but especially China. I’m also worried about running trials on patients in China.
More drugs faster sounds good, but what about those drugs being approved in the US and Europe? That would still take time. Because what, would anyone risk taking drugs without such approval? I think the experience with Covid vaccines tells us that you’re taking big chances.
So as I see it, approval agencies in the West are still going to be time bottlenecks. And I don’t think you want to take a chance without approvals. YMMV.
Most started around 2015 so we’re still early. Western big pharma buy Chinese assets after a successful phase 1 or 2 in China and then run the phase 3 globally for ethnic diversity + to satisfy Western regulators who are wary of China. Chinese drugs will soon flood the market as they did for electronics and now cars. Unless there a wakeup call in the West, the next blockbuster drug will be Chinese.
By the way I assume that Chinese drugs face more scrutiny from Western regulators than other drugs so approved Chinese drugs will be better in terms of efficacy and safety than non-Chinese drugs.
We postulated that China’s contributions to drug discovery might be rising, perhaps ranking equal to long-standing pharmaceutical pioneers such as Switzerland or Japan.
Reality was quite different.
When national contributions were compared on an annual basis, China had not merely surpassed the collective output of Europe and the rest of Asia, but gained parity with the United States. This outcome is all the more remarkable as the growth occurred almost entirely over the past decade. As an example, China’s output in terms of new drug discovery had increased from about 30 new medicines in 2013 to more than 400 a decade later. Output by American sources has remained comparatively flat since 2018, while China’s contributions nearly tripled in that same period.
To be clear, the United States continues to be a powerhouse and moves exceptionally quickly. But we are now a Ford Mustang racing against the Chinese-built BYD Yangwang U9 supercar.
Unlike many, I don’t believe in demonizing everything that comes out of China - I think the competition in drug discovery is a boon for all humanity. It would be stupid to only rely on the US or the West seeing how fickle the financing can be from one administration to another, and the general research retrenchment of the debt ridden West. In this context I welcome the contribution from China - properly vetted of course, as always and everywhere, this should go without saying - all of humanity gains. There is a crying need for interventions in NDDs and cancer which remain major killers and rob people of QOL in their senior years. I am not going to reject a - vetted - drug just because it comes from China.
Of course, thank god there’s China to offer us new fantastic drugs while the West is falling. Hopefully this will be a “Sputnik moment” for the West and they’ll wake up (deregulate + fund research).
Chinese companies are developing drugs faster and cheaper than anyone else, including the U.S. And while the early focus has been on copycat drugs and incremental improvements, it’s possible that something more profound might emerge from that ecosystem: a new productive way of developing drugs.
And it cannot happen soon enough. I am extremely frustrated by the glacial pace of not only drug development but better and faster implementation of clinical practice. It takes literally decades for new treatment modalities to penetrate to the local doctor. It’s a scandal that we’ve known for literally decades that for example ApoB is a superior lipid risk biomarker than LDL-C and yet standard lipid panels have not changed for decades. How can we implement better public health policies when everything is moving at a snail’s pace? It’s a scandal. We need competition. Just as Japanese cars brought quality to the auto industry in the West, so too biotech in China hopefully can spur everyone to pull up their pants and start delivering.
I wouldn’t generalize, and I think your views probably missing out on the true state of things in China. They produce most of the active pharmaceutical ingredients that all drug companies use… and they are now coming out with many more drugs, faster, than the USA. They are growing rapidly. There are more and more partnerships with Chinese firms, and licensing from Chinese biotech. Their development cycles are much faster than ours.
Their R&D is very strong now, especially in certain target areas.
Its the usual commie propaganda that hasnt changed even as mao was starving 50m to death they were saying they were overtaking the usa…hah.
Covid was only 4y ago and u can see their response was totally unscientific spraying disinfdctant on streets, locking people in apts, producing shoddy vaccines, etc.
A lot of the science they produce are also fake or fudged, this is well known, that compared to say the usa or singapore, in china many papers are deliberately fudged.
Many of the public hospitals are dispensing fake vaccines also.
The above is just my opinion and some facts.
Its true that if one is a rogue scientist or crazy guy who wants to edit genes then china is definitely a ton easier to play around freely than the usa or any developed nation though
