From AI-powered drug discovery to innovative therapies reaching patients, China’s pharmaceutical industry is making rapid advances both at home and on the global stage.
China has set out key tasks and a series of indicative targets for the pharmaceutical industry during the 2026–2030 period. By 2030, China aims to keep its biopharmaceutical R&D and applications at the forefront globally.
China’s pharmaceutical industry has grown rapidly in recent years. Innovative drugs and medical devices are becoming increasingly important.
China Advances Drug Innovation
Innovative drugs, which typically involve high R&D barriers and offer high added value, are often described as “the crown jewel of the pharmaceutical industry”.
China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) said on September 20 that 59 innovative drugs and 51 innovative medical devices had been approved for marketing so far this year. Of the newly approved drugs, 13 were first-in-class therapies featuring new mechanisms or novel targets.
Since 2018, China has continued to improve the mechanism for dynamically updating its national drug reimbursement list. A total of 949 medicines have been newly added, including 199 innovative drugs, making more life-saving and emergency medicines available and affordable to patients.
AI Enters the Pharmaceutical Industry
AI is now being used across the pharmaceutical value chain, from drug discovery and development to manufacturing, quality control and regulation.
A Goldman Sachs research report estimates that AI could shorten the time required to bring a drug to market by 20% to 25%, reduce development timelines by around three years, and cut overall development costs by 25% to 30%.
Harbour BioMed and BioMap, a company incubated by Baidu, have formed a strategic partnership. The two sides will focus on AI-powered R&D for complex large-molecule drugs. The two companies also jointly established MegaStream TechBio, an AI-driven drug development company targeting global markets. The move is an effort to explore new models of AI-powered drug discovery.
Chinese Innovative Drugs Go Global
China’s innovative drug sector is also gaining momentum overseas, with a surge in international licensing deals.
According to industry data, 81 outbound licensing deals involving Chinese innovative drugs were completed in the first half of this year, with a combined transaction value of approximately $110 billion.
Chinese drugmakers are increasingly working with multinational pharmaceutical companies as “global partners,” sharing risks and rewards on a more equal footing.
At the same time, China’s innovative therapies are attracting patients with difficult-to-treat diseases from overseas.
One South Asian patient with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma travelled to Beijing after treatment in his home country proved unsuccessful. The patient received CAR-T cell therapy and was later discharged.
Innovation Enters Everyday Life
Medical innovation is no longer confined to laboratories and industrial parks. It is increasingly becoming part of everyday life.
This year, a rehabilitation therapy combining non-invasive brain-computer interfaces, spinal cord stimulation and a lower-limb exoskeleton developed by Chengtianke Technology was successfully tested on a patient with spinal cord injury at Tongji Hospital.
At Wuhan University Zhongnan Hospital, a 36-year-old patient recovering from meningioma surgery used brain signals to control an exoskeleton robot, enabling her affected leg to perform leg-raising exercises as part of her rehabilitation.
Meanwhile, a clinical trial led by Deng Hongkui’s team at Peking University involving stem-cell-derived pancreatic islet transplantation has also achieved a breakthrough. Following transplantation, the first patient with type 1 diabetes was able to stop using insulin 75 days after the procedure, marking progress toward long-term autonomous blood-glucose regulation and offering a potential alternative to daily insulin injections.
Written by Sha Liu, charts created by Di Wang, additional reporting by CNS, ECNS and CNR Online.
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