Pharmaceutical giant R&D accelerates transfer to China

As the first foreign pharmaceutical giant to move new drug research and development projects into China, Lilly USA and Hutchison Pharmaceuticals recently signed a cooperation agreement on the joint development of new cancer target drugs. This is the first time since the two sides started to cooperate in August last year, and once again signed a joint development and cooperation plan for the development of new drugs.

Relevant person in charge of the company said that this cooperation is even larger. According to the new agreement, Eli Lilly will jointly develop new cancer drug targets with He Huang Medicine on a global scale over a period of time. Lilly will pay HWL for a higher signing bonus, potential drug candidate deposits, and milestones for each important R&D phase than the previous contract. And as with the cooperation agreement last year, Hutchison Pharmaceutical will also receive a commission for the global sales revenue of the products produced by the cooperation between the two parties.

In order to save costs and improve efficiency, multinational companies have come to China to seek R&D cooperation in recent years. It is understood that Eli Lilly is currently exploring the transformation of drug research and development from an independent R&D pharmaceutical company model to a collaborative R&D medical network model. Cooperative R&D In addition to traditional R&D outsourcing, Lilly also tried to cooperate with Chinese and Indian companies on resource sharing. Because this cooperation is obviously different from the traditional R&D outsourcing model, many people in the industry believe that the R&D transfer of multinational pharmaceutical companies in China has begun to show some new features, from the simple R&D outsourcing to the project form cooperation, etc. A wider range and more varied forms of cooperation.

In fact, cooperation with multinational corporations, rather than providing simple outsourcing services, will also help improve China's new drug R&D capabilities. Wu Jiarui, deputy dean of the Shanghai Academy of Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, stated that the past advantage of the Shanghai Academy of Sciences lies in basic research, but the current trend is to quickly translate the results of basic research into practical applications. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out extensive and in-depth studies with the business community. Cooperation. "This kind of change is very difficult without the involvement and help of big companies."

With China increasingly becoming the preferred location for global R&D transfer, the Beijing-Shanghai region has formed an industrial cluster for R&D outsourcing services. Statistics show that the annual revenue of biomedical R&D services in Beijing has exceeded RMB 5 billion, and it is gradually forming a complete industrial chain service to participate in the global division of labor. Jin Kewen, director of Charisriver China R&D Center, predicts that the strength of R&D and transfer of large multinational corporations in the next 7 years will make China the second country after the United States.