The Chinese pharmaceuticals industry is undergoing a radical transformation. What used to be a “copycat” market in new drugs has quickly become a “fast-follower”. Chinese companies are snapping at the heels of their western counterparts in devising treatments.
Chinese biotech is seeing a particularly notable wave of innovation. Many biotech firms are building on recent progress in genomics, focusing on rare genetic diseases that are much better understood since the human genome was mapped in the early 2000s.
Take Hong Kong-listed Genscript, which has applied Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy (CAR-T), originally developed as a leukaemia treatment, to fight a wider range of cancers. Genscript’s unit, Nanjing Legend, won headlines around the world when it successfully treated Craig Chase, an American patient who had been suffering from an unusual form of blood cancer.