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China's Coming Biotech Revolution

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Nothing says a country has arrived quite like a thriving biotechnology industry. Whether it be a lifesaving drug or therapy, national pride gets a boost from the scientific excellence and sophisticated entrepreneurship it takes to deliver innovative biotechnology to patients. Biotech is also a high-risk, costly endeavor riddled with obstacles and setbacks. Many governments have tried to jumpstart their biotech industry only to fail. But China, starting from a low bar, with a market dominated by generic chemical drugs and a few follow-on biologics, looks set to reliably deliver meaningful innovation to patients within the next 10 years.


The government has certainly worked hard to support it. Biotechnology has been called out as a key industry in the 12th and 13th Five-Year Plans. It is estimated that the government spent US$6 billion in R&D pharma investments between 2010 and 2015. Although less than what the U.S. invests, the R&D dollar stretches farther in China’s lower cost environment. Today, China excels in basic research – where it tops rankings for the number of published papers in peer reviewed journals and quantity of patents – but remains weak in translational medicine: the tough task of getting exciting lab discoveries to work in the complex system of the body.


This is because R&D is only the seed; it takes a flourishing ecosystem for a biotech industry to function. It requires science-savvy venture capitalists to finance the start-ups; biotech CEOs and employees that combine entrepreneurship with scientific vision; qualified hospital investigators that follow clinical trial protocols to deliver clean data; transparent, predictable regulations that adhere to global standards for approving safe, effective drugs and therapies; an IP culture that protects patents and trade secrets and robust financial markets that provide investors with a profitable exit. And this is only a partial list; it also takes big pharma, contract research organizations (CROs) patient groups, an army of doctorates and much more.


China has been fortunate to have a flood of experienced ‘returnees’ (often called ‘sea turtles’) to accelerate the development of its biotech ecosystem. These China-born scientists, educated in North America or Europe with valuable industry experience, are filling positions across the life science industry. Now that China is the world’s second largest pharma market, after the U.S., China has become an opportunity too good to pass up.


Many are lured by the generous offers made by the 100-plus biotech parks that dot the country. Incentives include free office space, generous financing for labs and manufacturing facilities, tax breaks and the promise of an amenable living environment for the high-tech workers they hope will settle in the park. Backed by municipal governments, hi-tech parks often prefer to invest in tangible assets. Innovent, a successful biotech based in Suzhou BioBay, is a classic example; it received financing for a US$120 million biologics manufacturing facility from the local government.


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A resident of China since 1998, Shannon Ellis has worked for a Chinese NGO, the Canadian and British embassies in Beijing, and Nike. For the past three years, she has been reporting on China’s biotech industry for BioWorld. She also writes white papers for IMA Asia, an executive roundtable for MNCs.


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