BEIJING - China's ballooning middle class, born of market reforms, the extension of health insurance to a widening sector of the populace, and the return of Chinese scientists educated in the West are all driving the rapid-fire expansion of the country's pharmaceutical sector, according to the CEO of Sundia Meditech.
"By the year 2020, China could become the world's second-largest pharmaceutical market," said Wang Xiaochuan, founder and CEO of Sundia, a clinical research organization based in Shanghai.
China's evolution into a trading powerhouse is creating not only rising incomes, but also burgeoning demand for a higher standard of medical care and medicines, which is in turn attracting the globe's leading pharmaceutical companies.
"All of the pharmaceutical multinationals are coming to China, and many have begun setting up research and development centers here," said Wang, who returned from the United States four years ago to set up Sundia.
That trend is also being bolstered by China's growing matrix of legal protections for intellectual property, including drug patents, especially since the country joined the World Trade Organization, she said.
Meanwhile, the "Big Bang-like" expansion of the health care sector is spurring widening waves of Chinese scientists who, like Wang, obtained advanced degrees in the West to "go East."
This reverse flow of talent back to China "is a kind of revolution," said Wang.
A generation ago, similar waves of Japanese educated in the U.S. or Europe who returned likewise helped fuel an era of speedy growth, she noted.
Some of the overseas-trained Chinese scientists have, like the head of Sundia, set up CROs or small biopharmaceutical outfits in the government-sponsored high-tech parks that have mushroomed around China's leading cities and academic centers (PharmAsia News, June 30, 2008).
At the Zhangjiang High-Tech Park, Sundia Meditech is surrounded by drug research companies, biotech start-ups and other pharma firms.
That has made it easier for Wang to expand through an array of alliances with other clinical research groups, she said (PharmAsia News, March 5, 2008).
"Our expansion through partnerships has been driven by building demand from our clients," Wang explained. Her CRO's latest tie-up, with the U.K.-based NovaSecta, should pave the wave for Sundia to explore the European market, she added.
The rush of worldwide pharmaceutical concerns setting up research bases in China, and of Chinese firms expanding beyond the domestic market, is part of the globalization of the pharma sector across urban China.
CEO Wang said that European and American-educated scientists flowing back to China will speed up that process: "Our knowledge can be a bridge between China and the West. We know the [pharmaceutical] industry and we speak the same language."
"This is a new wave of history" that will propel China forward as it becomes a leading pharmacuetical power, she said.
As the world's leading pharmaceutical companies seek ties with Chinese drug research organizations, "the multinationals are becoming much more selective about the CRO," said Sundia's founder. In an era of increasing competition among Chinese pharmaceutical research companies, the big pharma firms are looking for CROs that have the talent "not just to synthesize compounds, but also to come up with innovations," she said.