The Economist on how China has sped up clinical trials and seen its biotech sector rise.
China’s government identified biotech as a strategic priority nearly two decades ago. But it was not until 2015 that things really took off, after the national drug regulator launched ambitious reforms. It took on more staff and cleared a backlog of 20,000 drug applications in just two years. Clinical trials were streamlined and brought into step with global standards. A study by Yimin Cui of Peking University and colleagues, published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, found that the time taken to approve the first round of human trials fell to 87 days, from 501 days before the reforms.
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It’s not just AI. China’s medicines are surprising the world, too
economist.com/business/2025/
from The Economist
There’s also a serious argument that US biotech investment is going into the wrong things from a national security perspective — too many bespoke skin creams, too few novel armor materials and anti-corrosion coatings:
When patents for name brand medicines expire, the price of that medicine drops significantly as generic versions enter the market, but that process can take a while. Watch a new video in STAT's 'Behind the Counter' series:
US drug trials are far too expensive. There must be a way to reduce cost.
Speeding up trials, increases the likelihood of shoddy testing and lab work.
Let’s say a lab in Wuhan has a leak, in pursuit of bringing drugs to market at breakneck rates, what are the potential benefits and consequences for adopting this protocol.
We’re not going to get it with this admin, sadly. And thus we’ll cede our lead in biotech to China as well.
This.
Bureaucrats are also important, it's called state capacity, some things you just can't cut.
Yes because they have a large highly functional bureaucracy they are going to shit kick us over the next 5 decades. Anyone with even a cursory understanding of political history knows this.
The FDA is the most cucked institution to ever exist and is the main enemy of innovation in pharmacology.
It's a good thing they don't believe in IP, so we can steal their technology and market it under our own brand names as they do with US pharma brands.
no actually we need to take the financial incentive out of our government health agencies and put the people first.