Olivier Elemento: A New Pharma World Order – The Inevitable Rise of Chinese Drug Innovation

Olivier Elemento, Director of Englander Institute for Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, shared a post on LinkedIn about a recent article by Sen Liu et al. published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery

“A New Pharma World Order: The Inevitable Rise of Chinese Drug Innovation

The global pharmaceutical landscape is undergoing a fundamental transformation. A recent paper in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (NRD) lays out the stark data, while an equally recent commentary from Tim Opler of Stifel adds vivid color. The picture that emerges is not one of slow evolution, but of a tectonic shift. The ultimate extrapolation is becoming clear: the era of the West as the sole wellspring of drug innovation is over.

First, the facts from the NRD paper. A decade of deliberate regulatory reform in China has ignited an innovation engine. In 2024, a record 93 innovative drugs were approved in China, with 42% being domestically developed. For perspective, the US FDA approved 50 novel drugs in the same year. China’s domestic pipeline is extensive, with over 4,000 innovative drug candidates from Chinese companies entering first-in-human trials over the past decade. The impact is global: China has surpassed Japan and Europe to become the second-largest region for first-global drug approvals, second only to the US. The value of these innovations is being recognized externally, with the cumulative potential value of out-licensing deals hitting US$51.9 billion.

Opler’s commentary provides the visceral context for this data. He notes a clear pivot from imitation to invention, a move from ‘less herd to more nerd’ as companies pursue novel, first-in-class therapeutics—a pivot supercharged by the ability to conduct clinical trials at a remarkable pace. This is happening in a country that has become ‘high tech mad,’ where Opler saw posters of AI company founders, like those from Deepseek, ‘lionized like movie stars.’ This intense focus on science and technology stands in sharp contrast to the deprioritization of research funding in the United States. The divergence in investor sentiment is another powerful sign: while the US biotech index (XBI) is down 4% year-to-date (as of July 30), the Hang Seng Biotech Index has surged a whopping 100% in the same period.

So, what is the inevitable future this trajectory points to? The notion that the West will exclusively handle discovery while China focuses on manufacturing is now outdated. We are entering an era where we will be importing and using novel, first-in-class medicines conceived and developed in China. I think this is not a possibility, but a certainty. Once a Chinese-developed therapy for cancer, autoimmune disease, or chronic pain demonstrates superior outcomes, immense pressure from patients and physicians will demand its availability. In the face of life-saving innovation, geopolitics and trade concerns become secondary. The real challenge is not about blocking the flow of these medicines, but about adapting to a new, multipolar world of pharmaceutical innovation.”

Title: The rise of China’s pharmaceutical industry from 2015–2024: a decade of innovation

Authors: Sen Liu, Hongxi Hu, Chenghao Ge, Shuona Yuan, Jianhua Jiang, Xiaoyuan Chen

Read the Full Article on Nature Reviews Drug Discovery

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