title: Biopharma CRO industry in China: landscape and opportunities.
abstract: The pharmaceutical industry has responded to the declining research and development (R&D) productivity over the past decade by decreasing its cost base and outsourcing parts of drug research, with China increasingly being the preferred destination for such outsourced work. For this Focus article, we collected and analyzed data for 66 China-based nonclinical contract research organizations (CROs); approximately 60% of the companies were localized in the Yangtze River Delta cluster and another 20% within the Beijing cluster. Almost 25% of the companies offered services in discovery biology, the single largest service offering in the data set, with another 20% offering preclinical research (toxicology, pharmacology, and animal models) and approximately 15% offering pharmaceutical development. The biologics and pharmaceutical development services represent key future growth areas, with CROs showing an increasing appetite for risk-sharing partnerships.
authors.affiliation: Research Outsourcing Office, IMED Biotech Unit, AstraZeneca, 199 Liangjing Road, Building 2, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, Shanghai 201203, China.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: AsiaPac & Emerging Markets, IMED Biotech Unit, AstraZeneca, 199 Liangjing Road, Building 2, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, Shanghai 201203, China. Electronic address: ajay.gautam@astrazeneca.com.
authors.forename: Ajay
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gautam
mesh_terms: D002681:China; D003132:Commerce / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000639:trends; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000639:trends; D004345:Drug Industry / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D007373:Interinstitutional Relations; D017146:Models, Organizational; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D020416:Outsourced Services / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000639:trends; D020414:Risk Sharing, Financial