A spate of fundraisings by Chinese biotech companies has highlighted a scramble for leadership of the country’s nascent life sciences sector and raised questions over how quickly China can rival the US and Europe as a source of blockbuster medicines.
Several promising Chinese drug developers have raised money in recent weeks or are preparing to do so in defiance of stock market volatility as investors show increasing interest in the commercial potential of China’s expanding medical research base.
China has not produced a new drug for the global market since artemisinin for malaria in the 1970s — a breakthrough for which chemist Tu Youyou was awarded a Nobel Prize last year. Even that was not adopted widely until its commercialisation by Novartis of Switzerland in the 1990s.