China Biological Medicine Outsourcing Industry Indepth Research and Investment Strategy Planning Report, 2013-2017

With the improvement of China intellectual property environment, more and more Euro-American large-scale corporations choose Chinese corporations as outsourcing partners. There are more than 400 pharmaceutical R&D outsourcing corporations in nationwide and most of them locate in Beijing Zhongguancun, Chengdu Hi-tech Park and Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park, etc. They are engaged in R&D outsourcing segmentations like compounds, raw material medicine research, medicine preclinical research and clinical trials and so on.

Since the 21st century, input of western medicine is increasing while new drug varieties are decreasing. Thus the outsourcing is a perfect choice for pharmaceuticals giants.

Outsourcing is a general trend. According to the statistics of British Antisoma, 35% of pharmaceutical companies in the current world choose outsourcing. At present, annul growth of global pharmaceutical R&D outsourcing market is 20% to 25%. There is about 3.05 billion USD R&D business of global pharmaceutical companies outsourcing to the independent third party laboratory in 2009, while it reaches 3.6 billion USD in 2010.

For China market, the medium-small size corporations lack of technology and talent reserve; not all the corporations can afford for the cost of new drug R&D. Thus, it is better for them to develop circuitously rather than scrambling the business along in the world. Choosing the R&D outsourcing service for big corporations is a practical development bridge links the short-term efficiency and long-term strategy for the corporations who are interested in new drug R&D.

For the newly pharmaceutical market outsourcing service, China is one of the fast development countries. Currently, among the thousands of biological medicine outsourcing service corporations, the leading corporations are WuXi AppTec, Shanghai ChemPartner Co. Ltd. (ChemPartner), CharlesRiver and Fountain Medical Development Ltd. (FMD) and so on. The outsourcing service scale reaches 4 billion USD and the annul growth is 25%.

Presently, pharmaceutical outsourcing service is regarded as an important item for local development and productbility service industry and new growth dot in economic development by Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, etc. Advantages for Beijing focus on the fields of drug non-clinical trials and drug clinical trials, drug metabolism studies and so on, while for Shanghai it focuses on chemical synthesis, drug non-clinical trials and clinical trials.

Meanwhile, along with the gradual perfection of Chinese medicine policy, profound changes are taking place in new drug R&D structure—transfer from the copy model to innovation drug R&D with independent intellectual property. Besides, capable R&D business develops from pharmaceuticals synthesis, active ingredients production and clinical trials to pharmaceuticals synthesis, pharmacokinetics, drug safety evaluation and phase III clinical, etc. All these promote rapid rise of China CRO. Even though there are only 5 outsourcing companies which is capable to provide one-stop-solution covering new drug R&D service, China CRO market scale has reached 17 billion Yuan in 2010. And CRO companies with output value exceed 10 million Yuan has been more than 15. China has surpassed India and become the first choice R&D outsourcing country in Asia.

With the improvement of China intellectual property environment, more and more Euro-American large-scale corporations choose Chinese corporations as outsourcing partners. There are more than 400 pharmaceutical R&D outsourcing corporations in nationwide and most of them locate in Beijing Zhongguancun, Chengdu Hi-tech Park and Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park, etc. They are engaged in R&D outsourcing segmentations like compounds, raw material medicine research, medicine preclinical research and clinical trials and so on.

Nowadays market scale of China CRO is not large. But it attracts investment capital due to the industry characters of “high added value and high profit rate”.

In March, 2011, the Shanghai Medicilon Inc., which is specialized in integrated services, attracts Fortune Capital as a strategy investment partner and is hopeful to be on the GEM in 3 years. At the same time, many domestic CRO corporations, like Hangzhou Tigermed Consulting Co., Ltd and Shanghai Medicilon Inc. has started their IPO plans. China pharmaceutical outsourcing market shows enormous investment potential according to huge disease resources and medical market as well as good clinical conditions.

In the following years, growth rate of Euro-American market will decrease while Asian newly market will grow to 11%-14%. It brings a great development opportunity to Asian countries. As the strongest competitor for China, India has taken steps to promote the development of pharmaceutical outsourcing market and regards it as an “inevitable strategy”. China should have a fast react, like forming strategy alliance, fastening construction of supporting infrastructure and R&D base and founding industry institutes, to integrate various technical advantages and make core competition.

In addition, from the growth experience of foreign large-scale pharmaceutical outsourcing corporation, provide “all-around service” is the key for outsourcing. For China pharmaceutical outsourcing corporations, synthesizing outsourcing of one-stop-solution R&D service is much important than well serving the transnational pharmaceutical companies. Under such model, resource assembly effect will reaches its peak. At present, China new drug GMP is under its promotion. Such a fresh new outsourcing model will definitely bring unprecedented opportunities for domestic corporations which are long for new products. What’s more, it will become the mainstream model for China pharmaceutical outsourcing in the future.

Qianzhan Business Information Co., Ltd. Industry Research Center
Research Team of Biological Medicine Outsourcing Industry