Asia Pharm R&D 2010 - New CRO Trends Become Focus of Industry

SHANGHAI, March 2 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Shanghai will welcome Asia Pharm R&D 2010 on March 4-5. This summit will converge local pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, global biotech companies and research institutes and labs in Asia, as well as those from further a field, as well as venture capital firms and consultancies, law firms and even a translation company. Representatives in attendance include those from the U.S., Japan, mainland China, India and Taiwan.

The brainchild of the Global Leaders Institute (GLI) will eventually bring around 150 delegates together with the promise of potential partnering opportunities and helpful workshops, keynote speeches, panel discussions and intriguing company showcases.

The representative from Transhorsa Translation Ltd. (supporter to the whole translation process) describes this event as a milestone in clinical research organisation ("CRO") processes in the global pharmaceutical research chain, especially for Asia's preclinical phase. The main representatives will deliver presentations on Asian strategies: How big pharma and biotech companies manage their R&D activities; How can companies derive maximum value from M&A and licensing deals, diversifying product pipelines; Rethinking about natural products; Exploring biologics; Pros and cons of conducting clinical trials in various Asian countries; How biotech companies can thrive in the prolonged funding drought; and Realizing personalized medicine through translational research; Showcase of novel therapeutics for oncology, cardiology, neurology, inflammation and immunology.

Battered by economic uncertainty and under pressure to deliver better medical products in more cost-effective ways, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly driven to outsource their research and development to CROs in Asia.

This trend in the biomedical sector is poised to make China one of the most popular CRO destinations within the next 10 years. This week, RightSite looks at how investors can profit from the growth of China's CRO industry. With the rapid outsourcing development from pharmaceutical research to clinical trial, China's progress on the protection of pharmaceutical IP rights offers a better investment environment for multinational pharmaceuticals that sow millions of dollars every year into R&D. The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) Law of China was revised in 2000 to allow the patenting of pharmaceutical compositions, which established a major improvement over the previous practice of only allowing the patenting of a method to make or use a drug.

According to research published by Australian law firm DLA Phillips Fox, China has put new measures in place to raise the penalties for patent infringement from 300% to 400% of illicit profits and increasing damage payments from RMB 50,000 to RMB 200,000, even if there is no profit from the infringement. These changes are just part of the changing attitudes towards protecting patents and other intellectual property that is making China more attractive for research dependent industries such as CROs.

"China's returnees abundant human capital, lower business costs and experienced returnees (nicknamed "seaturtles" in China) is allowing entrepreneurs to build Chinese biotech firms that are far more integrated -- with significant capabilities in disciplines ranging from discovery research through clinical development -- than their counterparts in the west. And this integrated approach can produce more efficient and productive R&D," described Samantha Du, Ph.D. Chief Executive Officer, Hutchison MediPharma Limited.

Trends in pharmaceutical development is an area organizations are most concerned with, and Greg Wiederrech PhD, Vice President & Head from Merck & Co., will present Driving Innovation through Strategic Relationships at the Summit, "Pipeline woes throughout the pharma industry are well acknowledged and executives are responding via a number of strategic actions including mergers, acquisitions, entries into other modalities such as biologics and siRNA, entries into new geographic markets, regional deal making, and more risk sharing. Some of these strategies will win and some may not."

Chunlin Chen PhD of Shanghai Medicilon Inc, said, "Many CROs emerged in China to offer customers cost-effective synthetic capabilities as well as aid with molecular design and preclinical services. Currently, more and more international and domestic pharmaceutical companies are seeking integrated services CROs for their R&D work." He will state different collaboration patterns between integrated services CROs and pharmaceutical companies that he has assumed with many case studies in practice and ahead of the development.

Regarding the current financial downturn, Fintan Walton PhD, Chief Executive and Founder, PharmaVentures UK appears to have a positive outlook as "pharma companies, biotech and startups, when looking to China and Asia to conduct R&D more efficiently, tap into local centres of expertise, and options for funding in the region are becoming increasingly diverse against a backdrop of a global biotech funding downturn" like OBN's press release statement "Biotech Investment is Safer than Banks."

The summit will make a successful round of presentations and a large number of private partnering discussions occurring throughout the two days, GLI will push pharmaceutical and preclinical research far more than ever before.

At the heart of the financial and business district in Shanghai, the beautiful InterContinental Hotels & Resorts will be the base for this summit, and private business meetings and one-on-one networking sessions are going to ensure Asia Pharm R&D 2010 can create a more efficient and effective way for contributors of this field to communicate and improve their projects to success.

    For more information, please contact:

     Monica Sun
     Tel:   +86-10-5900-0971 x607
     Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Global Leaders Institute