“China’s tumor innovation companies continue to emerge, and two-thirds of the newly listed biotechnology companies since 2017 have focused on tumor treatment.” On June 19, the 3rd HERO Oncology “Heng” Forum and Hengrui 50 At the anniversary celebration, Hou Lei, McKinsey’s global managing partner and head of McKinsey’s new pharmaceutical product launch consulting business in China, said in a speech that China’s oncology innovation and research is moving from following learning to leading innovation, showing five major development trends.
The first trend is that with the opening of the capital market, the reform of the State Food and Drug Administration, and the opening of national access payments, China’s innovative biotechnology companies continue to appear. Among them, two-thirds of newly listed companies since 2017 have focused on tumor treatment.
The second trend is that the R&D pipeline has a clear focus, and both multinational and local pharmaceutical companies focus on high-incidence cancers. Currently, 60% of China’s research oncology assets focus on the top five tumors with incidence, including lung cancer, colorectal cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer and breast cancer.
The third trend is that investment in immuno-oncology is also increasing. Local companies continue to make efforts in the registration and listing of immuno-oncology therapy products, the expansion of indications, and the commercialization of them, and they are expanding the international market through cooperation. Taking PD-1/PD-L1 oncology drugs as an example, according to incomplete statistics, in the past two years, at least 7 blockbuster collaborations have occurred between local and multinational pharmaceutical companies.
The fourth trend is that with the development of a new generation of cell and gene therapy technologies, China is very active in the field of cell therapy clinical trials and has the opportunity to gradually develop in this field. Leading the world.
The fifth trend is the steady improvement in the quality of scientific research. More Chinese researchers publish research results through high-level journals and international conferences, and the quality of R&D innovation and international influence continue improve. Hou Lei mentioned such a set of data: The publication status of oncology papers in the top five journals of “Nature”, “Science”, “Cell”, “New England Journal of Medicine” and “The Lancet” by China’s leading researchers (PI) has changed since 2015. 20 increased to 47 in 2019, with an annual growth rate of more than 20%.
Behind the rapid development of China’s tumor innovation and R&D, there are also problems that cannot be ignored. For example, compared with foreign countries, China’s clinical trial stage targets are more crowded.
In this regard, Hou Lei believes that this requires companies to create differentiated innovation pipelines around patient subgroups, product action mechanisms and technological platform innovation;At the same time, companies must optimize trial design, accelerate patient recruitment, and accelerate the development process while ensuring quality. In addition, companies should also explore cooperation possibilities and innovative cooperation models from product cooperative development to commercialization.
Hou Lei mentioned in the report that in the future, China’s tumor diagnosis and treatment ecosystem is being upgraded to the 2.0 stage and will develop in three major directions.
The first is screening and marker detection to promote precision medicine, increasing the proportion of early screening, and providing the possibility of early diagnosis and treatment; second, data assistance Clinical decision-making and patient support, through the localized intelligent auxiliary clinical decision-making support system, improve the quality and efficiency of diagnosis and treatment; third, commercial medical insurance enhances the patient’s ability to pay. Commercial insurance is playing an increasingly important role in the listing of new drugs.
“76% of the province-level administrative regions across the country have achieved audit or city-level benefit-mining insurance coverage PD1/PD-L1, and 12 provinces have reached the province-wide coverage “Hou Lei said that after more good tumor drugs are launched on the market, it is necessary to explore multiple access guarantees and with the participation of multiple parties, in order to bring innovative tumor products to more patients.