Hot topic: Should Pharma be looking east for new assets?
“Go west, young man!”
Such was the famous advice of Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the (long defunct) New York Tribune, to an acquaintance, Josiah B. Grinnell, in the mid-19th century.
Countless individuals, businesses, and industries have since followed that advice – and gone on to strike gold.
But when it comes to where Pharma sources its assets, the tide may now be turning.
For the old assumption that it’s firms in Western countries that come up with new drugs, while the East churns out the generics once they’ve gone off patent, is looking decidedly out of date.
Fresh data show more and more new ideas are emerging from biotechs in the Far East – particularly from China and South Korea.
What’s more, this is happening across a range of “hot” technologies including antibodies, RNA-based drugs and different types of cell and gene therapies.
The figures were spelt out in a fascinating webinar previewing the year ahead, hosted by Evaluate last Thursday (January 23).
Mark Lansdell, Asset & Portfolio Strategy Lead at Evaluate, told the webinar that China-based life science R&D was “surging”.
While 15 years ago there were 20 China-headquartered companies doing “innovative drug discovery”, the figure is now 1,081 – of which 813 have drugs in clinical trials, according to Evaluate’s drugs projects database, he said.
Chinese companies are particularly strong in antibody-based drugs such as bi-specifics and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), he added. But they are also moving ahead in other areas.
“48% of all bi-specifics in clinical trials have got a China-headquartered company as the originator,” he said. “For ADCs that jumps to 51%.”
“If a Western Big Pharma company, or frankly just a smaller biotech, is looking to bring such a drug into their portfolio – even if you are not specifically targeting China but just scanning for what’s available – [then] 50% of what’s available is China-based.”
While many argue that Western companies still have the edge in many key technologies, Lansdell said China was rapidly “gaining ground” in those too.
“If you look at RNA products, 21% have a China-headquartered company [as the originator],” he said. For cell therapies as a whole the figure is 30%, and for gene therapies it is 35%.
For chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) products, some 48% of those in pre-clinical or clinical development originated in China, he continued.
“The data look, to me, to be telling a slightly different story to the sentiment that I have been reading.”
Lansdell concluded: “Whichever way you look, whatever particular modality you are interested in, China is going to be a major source of in-licensing for Western companies.”
Daniel Chancellor, VP for Thought Leadership at Norstella, which owns Evaluate, added: “It’s not just China that has this amazing R&D engine.
“South Korean firms are really bringing loads and loads of new therapies into pre-clinical and clinical development.”
Looking at the last three years’ worth of new experimental drugs, “10% of them are coming out of South Korea,” he said. “It’s really quite remarkable.”
“So, clearly, there is an overall theme of looking east,” Chancellor said.