Update to China’s Growing Lead in Clinical Outsourcing

Yesterday, we posted how China is slowly overtaking the lead for clinical outsourcing over India. This latest post on Pharmalot highlights three significant developments that are shaping Asian pharmaceutical outsourcing according to this report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Here they are:

1 - The trend towards high-end innovation: Intellectual property concerns have previously inhibited this trend in pharma but, increasingly, such concerns are being overcome and major moves are being made by drugmakers to increase their drug discovery investment in Asia;

2 - Rapid expansion of clinical trials in Asia: The volume of clinical trials being conducted in countries outside of Europe, North America and Japan has been growing rapidly in recent years with Asian countries leading much of the growth. China has overtaken India as one of the fastest-growing locations. By June 2008, China had 428 clinical trials registered on the website Clinicaltrials.gov as under way and a cumulative total of 870 completed or ongoing trials compared with 737 in India. Cost has been a critical factor in this expansion. For example, clinical trials are estimated to be up to 50 percent cheaper in India compared to the US;

3 - A scaling up of manufacturing in Asia: With an increased commitment to international standards, Asian contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) are securing more outsourcing orders from big pharmaceutical companies. In India, for example, there are more than 100 FDA-approved pharmaceutical facilities – the largest number in any country outside the US. Of course, Chinese officials say there are committed, but actions speak louder than words.

Read the full report here.