‘Systemic leap’: China’s drug innovation push yields bumper crop

Home-grown therapies account for 80 per cent of approvals in first six months of the year Domestically produced novel drugs accounted for more than 80 per cent of market approvals in China in the first half of the year, reflecting a “leap” in the quality of the country’s pharmaceutical innovation, according to a government spokesman. A total of 38 innovative drugs were cleared for sale in the six-month period, of which 31 were home-grown medicines, said Ministry of Industry and Information Technology spokesman Tao Qing, at a media briefing in Beijing on Monday. Among the most closely watched approvals was Satri-cel, a personalised cell therapy that uses a patient’s own immune cells to attack cancer cells, developed by Shanghai-based CARsgen Therapeutics. It became the world’s first chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) treatment cleared for solid tumours, according to the company’s filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange. Approved on June 22, the therapy targets patients with late-stage stomach cancer who have not benefited from at least two earlier rounds of treatment, a group with few remaining options.

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