Drug research in Asia goes native

High recruitment rates and a robust regulatory framework strongly favor the Asian clinical research industry - and now pharma giants are going beyond simple outsourcing to study the region’s own health problems, states a new report by health care experts GBI Research.

The new report, which comes just days after an IFPMA-sponsored study finding an increasingly important role for innovation in middle-income countries (The Pharma Letter November 1) - explains that Asia offers a favorable environment for pharmaceutical progress, thanks to low costs, a large potential trial population and regulatory support. For example, oncology studies have now started to investigate the Asian phenotype, in order to learn even more about the nature of cancer.

During this year, over 12% of global clinical trials were carried out in the seven major markets of Asia, trailing behind the US share of 48.5%, and Europe’s 26.5%. Many Western biopharmaceutical companies are beginning to take advantage of emerging countries, where Asian regulatory agencies are streamlining the clinical trial process to meet global demand for cheap clinical research, but the vast opportunity in Asia has not yet been fully leveraged by the developed markets.