No sooner did Charles River report of its $1.6 B deal to acquire Wuxi Apptec's CRO business hit the street, PPD announced the opening of its new vaccine research center and claimed title of biggest CRO in China. See Fierce Biotech.
PPD opened its center in Taizhou China Medical City to enable it to conduct the world's largest vaccine trials but with shortened recruitment times due to easy access to study participants. The new center supports the fast growing vaccine market (> 20% CAGR).
Simon Britton, PPD's VP of clinical development for Asia Pacific, stated "Our strong expertise in vaccine clinical research and large presence in China make us well positoned to help our clients ensure adherence to global standards while addressing unique requirements for monitoring vaccine studies"
That's a lot of investment, and a lot of CRO activity in China for this week - or any week. But, as explained in FierceBiotech's story on China's CRO appeal, China's local authorities are willing to aggresively work with new businesses to meet their needs and make it happen. This according to Charles Rivers outgoing Chris Perkins.
China is less expensive to build in, has large, less expensive talent pools, far less expensive animal models, and regulators who want to help business. They also don't have any animal rights activists to harry labs and perhaps drive them underground as has happened in EU & US.
That's a number of good reasons for Big Pharma companies to do business with CRO's located in China - but who's counting.
Posted by Bruce Lehr April 28th 2010.
Well Jeffry - first I'd note that the CRL and Wuxi deal fell apart and did not close. But, nevertheless the trend towrd more clinical work beign done in Asia due to cost savings is real. Yes, one does need to be concerned about the quality of the work. Due diligence does need to be exercised in selecting vendors to do trial work and to ensure appropriate quality standards are met. You can't really "dump quality" to save a few bucks on the trials. I'm hopeful that regulators worldwide will collaborate to ensure that is not the case. But diligence is ultimately required by company purchasng the trial services.
Posted by: bigredbruce | 03/16/2011 at 12:46 PM
I appreciate your perspective on this topic. I was wondering, though, are you concerned with the quality and safety of the materials coming out of China? If the toy industry is any indication of the level of "safety", I think we all should be having second thoughts about cutting costs in any endeavor at the sacrifice of the quality.
Posted by: Jeffry John Aufderheide | 03/16/2011 at 10:36 AM
More on Alvogen (Norwich Pharmaceuticals) from Outsourcing Pharma
http://www.outsourcing-pharma.com/Clinical-Development/Norwich-forming-Indian-CRO-to-support-Alvogen-clients?utm_source=RSS_text_news
Posted by: Bruce Lehr | 04/29/2010 at 06:22 PM
And while this post is about growth in CRO competition in China, I would like to remind readers that India is equally as active if not more so. Today (April 29th) Alvogen announced the establishement of a new CRO in India as reported in PBR.
http://inwardinvestment.pharmaceutical-business-review.com/news/alvogen_establishes_new_cro_in_india_100429/
Posted by: Bruce Lehr | 04/29/2010 at 05:18 PM
Fierce Biotech reports this morning that even though a couple new big CRO options now exist in China, Novartis intends to keep R&D in-house there.
http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/novartis-ceo-plans-keep-china-r-d-ops-house/2010-04-29
Posted by: Bruce Lehr | 04/29/2010 at 10:07 AM