According to the website clinicaltrials.gov, China now has more clinical trials underway than India. It used to be that the order was reversed. At present, there are 274 clinical trials in progress in China, while India has 260 active trials registered on the website.
China can also brag that it has 510 completed or ongoing trials, against 471 in India. Also, many trials are probably in progress but not registered. Even though China has this numerical advantage, the two countries could more realistically be characterized as being in a dead heat, given that there are a total of 40,000 trials listed on the website, almost 200 times the number registered in either country. However, because international pharmaceutical companies do tend to list their trials, the momentum swing from India to China shows that big pharma is increasingly more comfortable in China than they are in India. Much of that comfort comes from an increasing trust in China’s IP laws, which have been getting stronger.
China moved late in 2006 to protect the IP of Pfizer’s (PFE) Viagra, while Novartis (NVS) lost a patent case in India over its cancer drug Gleevec. Although Gleevec is protected in the rest of the world, India ruled that the drug was only an incremental improvement over earlier compounds, and therefore did not merit patent protection. In reaction, Novartis rescinded its announced initiative to locate an R&D center in India after the patent setback, saying that it did not make business sense to do research in India if the company could not protect its discoveries.
India, on the other hand, has a more mature drug industry, with generic giants like Dr. Reddy’s Labs (RDY) and Ranbaxy that are starting to move from their beginnings as generic drug strongholds into innovative drug discovery. Dr. Reddy’s has a diabetes therapy in late-stage development, while Ranbaxy is working on a malaria drug.
In general, considering all industries rather than just biopharma, India lags China in its commitment to R&D. In 2005, India spent 1% of its GDP on R&D, while China invested 1.34%. India has announced that it will seek to move that up to 2% by 2012, while China wants to be at a 2.5% level by 2020. Biopharma will continue to grow in China, if for no other reason than the China market itself is so large and underserved. As its populace becomes more affluent, it will demand better health care. However, because the government in China has identified biopharma as one of its areas of interest, the field will receive an added impetus, as China uses its high-quality, low-cost R&D/manufacturing ability to satisfy the pharmaceutical needs of the entire world.
Disclosure: none.
