Chinas Great Leap into Biotech
China wants to go big on biotech and already is marching into experimental gene therapy.
China wants to go big on biotech and already is marching into experimental gene therapy.
Last year marked a milestone in cancer treatment: In August, the U.S. FDA approvedNovartis AG"s Kymriah, a CAR-T therapy for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a blood and bone-marrow cancer previously considered untreatable. Two months later, Kite Pharma Inc."s Yescarta, which also uses CAR-T to target certain types of large B-cell lymphoma in adults, got the green light, too.
So far, CAR-T has shown extraordinary results. More than 60 percent of children treated with Kymriah were cured, while the rate of full remission for patients treated with Yescarta was more than half.
The big problem is price. Kymriah costs $475,000 for a single treatment; Yescarta goes for $373,000.
Now China reckons it can do this better and cheaper. There are currently 153 CAR-T studies in the nation, just behind 186 in the U.S., according to Bernstein Research"s Laura Nelson Carney. Already, China has one therapy commercially available in a free-trade zone for medical tourism on the resort island of Hainan. The product, made by Innovative Cellular Therapeutics Co., sells for 490,000 yuan ($76,000) per treatment. Prices for CAR-T can be expected to drop below 100,000 yuan in three years, according to local media reports.
It"s not hard to see the potential. For one thing, China"s huge population means an abundance of patients for trials. For another, the nation is now flooded with venture-capital money to throw at well-qualified "sea turtles" __ as returning Chinese expats are known __ to build world-class medical labs at home.
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