China's Escalating Scientific Output Tempered By Quality Concerns

TOKYO - Much ink has been devoted to cover the explosion of scientific research being developed in China, but some in the pharma industry charged with identifying potential research partners are troubled with the quality of some research coming out of China.

According to the U.S. National Science Foundation's Jan. 15 "Science and Engineering Indicators 2010" submission to President Obama and the U.S. Congress, China accounts for about 9 percent of global R&D expenditure, behind only the U.S. - at 33 percent of the total - and Japan - at 13 percent. In 1995, China produced 2 percent of the world's scientific articles; now 8 percent of the world's scientific articles come from China.

Increasingly, there are concerns about the scientific quality in a country where there is extreme pressure on academic institutions to publish. The British medical journal The Lancet recently pushed Chinese officials to take additional steps to curb academic misconduct. [Disclosure: PharmAsia News and The Lancet are both owned by Elsevier.]

For those in the pharma industry searching for external innovative technology, this creates wariness when approaching potential partners in China, despite the mounting output of scientific research.

"Not all science is equal," said Joe McCracken, who heads Roche's pharma partnering for Asia.

"I would be very skeptical of a claim ... that was based solely on publication, even peer-reviewed journals in China where there is enormous incentive to publish. Some papers have been retracted," he said.

In 2007, 70 articles from Jinggangshan University were retracted for publishing false data.

Of course, that does not mean all data is fraudulent, and multinational companies are establishing staff like McCracken because of the strong scientific output from countries like China, South Korea, Singapore and Japan, even though companies like Roche still source the majority of their compounds from the U.S. and Europe.

"I'm here because there are enormous opportunities around Asia, and we believe that in the future a lot more of our opportunities will come from Asia," McCracken said, speaking at BIO's Asia Partnering Conference in Tokyo in January.

Roche has five people in Asia searching for partnering opportunities, compared to 12-15 staff in the U.S. and 20-30 staff in Europe. In January, Roche signed its first in-licensing deal in South Korea to gain access to DigitalBiotech's proprietary RAGE antagonist program targeting Alzheimer's disease (Also see "Roche Signs First In-licensing Deal In Korea With DigitalBiotech For Alzheimer's Disease Candidate" - Scrip, 21 Jan, 2010.).

AstraZeneca Japan COO Mark Mallon agreed that his company's mix of research currently does not reflect trends of where new science is being created, but said all therapeutic areas within AstraZeneca are looking in Asia.

Even though AstraZeneca currently has more than 70 new compounds in development in the region, "Asia is not yet indexed fully at the right percentage, but we are growing," Mallon said.

"Five years ago we did not have an Asia strategy; today we do," said Biogen Idec Business Development Executive VP Mark Lytton. He cited common reasons for coming to Asia: to accelerate and reduce R&D and manufacturing costs, bringing the company's products to Asian markets and finding partners to expand the company's pipeline, particularly for drugs suited to Asian markets. Biogen Idec also offshores all data management to India.

While companies are interested in developing drugs specifically with a country's market in mind, when partnering, global deals still reign.

"I won't say we're not interested in regional deals, but we have an extraordinarily high bar when entering into those kinds of transactions. They would really have to leverage some sort of on-the-ground resource, a very significant value for that country or region," Roche's McCracken said.

Discussing the rapid growth of China's research output, McCracken noted the strong government support, and told attendees at BIO's conference in Tokyo that those interested in supporting Japan's nascent biotech industry should take note.

"There is really good alignment in China of venture capital, local and national resources as well as biotech companies. You don't see that here in Japan. There's a lesson here if there's some way to get better alignment that would be helpful here in Japan."

- Daniel Poppy ([email protected])