Hepeng Jia/ Beijing, China 

China's contracted research organisations (CROs) could finally be set to garner a bigger slice of the research being outsourced by big pharmaceutical firms. 

At a signing ceremony in Beijing on 20 October, five CROs secured research deals worth more than 
US$7 million to develop medicines and diagnostics for cancer, cardiovascular diseases and rabies, for leading foreign and domestic drug firms such as Jiangsu Province-based Hengri Medicine, the largest cancer drug manufacturer in China. As well as securing R&D deals, Beijing-based CRO AutekBio Inc also won venture capital of 
$3 million from the US-based Acorn Campus Ventures. 

Most of the CROs securing the deals belong to the Alliance of Biotech Outsourcing (ABO), an industry association that consists mainly of companies based in Beijing. According to Zhang Zegong, deputy director of Beijing Pharma and Biotech Center (BPBC) - the organisation that founded the ABO - the total revenue of the eight ABO members is expected to double this year, surpassing 300 million yuan ($40.3 million). 

Compared with Beijing's emerging players, Shanghai's pharmaceutical CROs are performing even better. The price of shares in WuXi Pharmatech, the largest CRO in China, has risen threefold since it was floated on the New York Stock Exchange just two months ago. 

Wang Hua, a BPBC analyst, told Chemistry World  that while CROs are not new to China, this year is the first time they have attracted leading venture capitalists and stock market investors. 

Nathan Zhang, president of Beijing-based CRO Sinocro, agreed. 'It seems to me that WuXi Pharmatech became a leading pharmaceutical company without developing a patentable drug of its own.' The deals show that China's pharmaceutical industry can develop soundly despite not having access to the financial resources and market revenues required to develop their own drugs, he adds. 

But Wang Jingang, president of Beijing-based CRO Cosci Med-Tech, says many Chinese CROs are serving the lower end of the value chain for international pharmaceutical giants by, for example, synthesising cheap pharmaceutical ingredients rather than drugs. 

Zhang agrees. 'The major problem is China's clinical trial criteria are not consistent with the international rules,' he says. 'But I believe that will change gradually.'