China leads the world in heparin production

China, abundant in heparin raw materials, has become one of the world's largest heparin producers and exporters, owing to the quality of heparin active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) having won international recognition gradually, according to a new report.
Due to the euro debt crisis, the global market suffered a deep recession. Coupled with that, the heparin export standard has been lifted, China's export volume of heparin API was no more than 105.2 tons in 2011, approximating 14.6 trillion units, or around 45.9% of global demand during the same period.
Leading heparin API suppliers worldwide include Shenzhen Hepalink Pharmaceutical, Changzhou Qianhong Bio-Pharma, Yantai Dongcheng Biochemicals and Nanjing King-Friend Biochemical Pharmaceutical, which have ranked top four industrial players by export for several successive years, with the combined export value making up more than 70% of China's total export value of heparin.
There is no distinct change in terms of the export pattern. However, the export prices of China's top 10 heparin exporters witnessed a downturn in 2011-first-half 2012. Nevertheless, this was not the case for Dongying Tiandong Pharmaceutical and Jiangsu Medicine Health Care Article Imp & Exp (Group), whose export prices increased by 3.8% and 2.1% year-on-year respectively in January-May, 2012, due to the improved quality of exported products as well as the low cardinal number of exported prices in the preceding year.
Meanwhile, Chinese heparin API flagship enterprises including Shenzhen Hepalink Pharmaceutical, Changzhou Qianhong Bio-Pharma, Yantai Dongcheng Biochemicals, Hebei Changshan Biochemical Pharmaceutical and Nanjing King-Friend Biochemical Pharmaceutical are projected to expand their capacities and improve the heparin industry chains. Among these, the first four have made IPOs, while Nanjing King-Friend Biochemical Pharmaceutical is also preparing for an IPO. According to public information issued by related enterprises, the heparin API capacity of China will increase by more than 18 trillion units by 2014, with the total capacity expected to exceed 30 trillion units, making up over 70% of the global demand.
Although China is a large country with rich heparin API, the downstream production of general heparin and low molecular weight heparin preparations is still at the initial stage. In the high-end low molecular weight heparin market, especially, joint ventures and foreign brands including Sanofi, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline have entered into the Chinese market. According to the China Pharmaceutical Industry Association, imported low molecular weight heparin calcium accounted for more than 60% of the total procurement of such products by representative hospitals in 22 Chinese cities in 2011.
However, with the improvement of R&D and technological strength, the competitiveness of made-in-China low molecular weight heparin preparation market is increasingly enhancing. A case in point is Hebei Changshan Biochemical Pharmaceutical, the capacity of low molecular weight heparin calcium injection of which soared from 4 million pcs to 10 million pcs in 2011, with the sales increased by 68.4% year-on-year to 86.93 million renminbi (around $14 million), compared to the sales of 117 million renminbi in first-half 2012, a year-on-year rise of 237.6%.
Source: The Pharma Letter

China's biotech boom

The  government has set up biotech zones across China

In September, U.S. medical technology company Medtronic announced a $755 million merger with Chinese Orthopaedic devices manufacturer KangHui. In a press release, Medtronic’s executive vice president Chris O’Connell described China as “one of the fastest growing medical device markets with significant scale opportunities.”
The Medtronic merger follows a series of other M&As in the Chinese biotech sector. According to the Centre for Asia Private Equity Research, in the first half of the current year, private equity investments in the Chinese healthcare sector amounted to $489 million, double that of last year. The centre attributed this sudden rise to the increased spending by the Chinese government, and its reforms measures.
   Significantly, in its 12th Five Year Plan from 2011 to 2015, Beijing has allocated $3 billion on innovative medicine, the cultivation of new varieties of genetically modified organisms, and the prevention and control of infectious diseases. The government’s efforts to promote the industry also include legal and regulatory reform measures. For example, in 2011, it relaxed certain restrictions in respect of foreign investment in hospitals and diagnostic centres.
   The Chinese government is also setting up biotech zones across the country to support for new drug innovation, which until now has been a weakness of the Chinese biotech industry. According to Richard Bird, counsel at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, China has been relatively slow in this area, and there are currently not many promising products and technologies in the pipeline, he says.
The foreign pharmaceutical companies too have made investments mostly in their own R&D and biomedical centres. In November 2009, the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced an investment of $1 billion over a period of five years. This money is going into its Chinese research facility, and also the expansion of the Novartis Institute for BioMedical Research in Shanghai.
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