Ancient Chinese Cures Seen Helping Drugmaker Pipelines
The world’s biggest drugmakers are turning to ancient Chinese remedies to boost product pipelines.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc is testing botanicals — compounds extracted from plants — for immune disorders, Sanofi plans to turn traditional Chinese medicines into alternative diabetes and cancer therapies, and Nestle SA (NESN) teamed last month with billionaire Li Ka-Shing to develop a drug derived from ancient Chinese approaches to cure inflammatory bowel disease.
The confluence of China’s growing middle class and pharmaceutical companies’ need to find new revenue have combined to give Western drugmakers an increasingly open mind about a 2,500 year-old form of medicine they once scoffed at.
“You have 1.3 billion people, many of whom cannot afford Western medicines and who believe that traditional Chinese medicines are good enough,” said Bloomberg Industries analyst Sam Fazeli. “If they can manufacture it on a meaningful scale, and do it with the stamp of a Glaxo or a Sanofi on it, perhaps the consumer will be more interested in buying it than something that’s boiled up in a vat somewhere.”
China’s market for traditional drugs, excluding raw herbs and highly purified compounds extracted from herbs, was $13 billion in 2011 and could grow 14 percent annually over the next five years, according to consultancy McKinsey & Co. Of last year’s total, $6 billion came from medicines sold over the counter, accounting for almost half of China’s market for non- prescription drugs, the consultancy said.
Source: Bloomberg News
Category: Pharmaceuticals
