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Japan In the five years since the Japanese drugmaker began a strategic shift and created an ambitious plan to maintain growth, CEO Kenji Yasukawa helped Astellas move away from its previous business model and bounce back from failing revenues. With the appointment of former chief strategy officer Naoki Okamura as its…

China A roundup of some of the biggest pharma and biotech news from China including the approval of two domestically developed COVID treatments; Daewoong’s idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis licensing deal, Roche’s gastric cancer partnership with CARsgen; Sino Biopharm’s continued attempt to buyout of F-star Therapeutics and Takeda’s deal with Hutchmed for a…

Africa As part of a special focus on drug development and clinical research in Africa in February 2023’s DIA Global Forum magazine, Lisa Ursella Collins of Innomas Clinical Research, Leslie Sam from Leslie Sam and Associates, Jayesh Pandit, a Patient Safety Advocate from Kenya, Helen Ndagije of the Uganda National Drug…

Japan Writing in the February 2023 edition of DIA’s Global Forum magazine, Yumi Wakabayashi of Janssen, Takahiro Horimatsu from the Institute for Advancement of Clinical and Translational Science at Kyoto University, Hiroshi Asai of Astellas, Yasuhiro Himeno from the Government of Japan’s Cabinet Office, and Hiroyuki Taruno of the Cancer Institute…

Chile Korean biotech SK Bioscience, known for bringing forward the first South Korean-developed COVID-19 vaccine, is pursuing its beyond-COVID growth strategy with a new green light for its SKYCellflu vaccine. The recent approval by Chile’s Instituto de Salud Publica follows nine others and is the first in the Latin America region.…

South Africa Roughly half of Africa’s 1.1 billion people lack regular access to even the most essential medicines and most of Sub-Saharan Africa depends on imports which make up as much as 70 to 90 percent of the medicines consumed there. As the COVID-19 pandemic further demonstrated this dependence and the vulnerability…

CEE Some of the most important stories emanating from the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region’s pharma industry, including Polpharma’s bid for Zentiva, Richter’s acquisition of OC Distributors and MDD approval in the US, Hungary’s windfall tax on pharma, Presage’s collaboration with Pure Biologics and Lithuania’s biotech ambitions.   Polpharma working…

Taiwan In just 35 years, Taiwan has gone from having no biotechs on the TAIEX and Taiwan OTC stock exchanges to 124 listed firms with a combined market capitalization of more than USD 30 billion by 2020, as the below chart from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace shows. In 2019,…

Korea While the Korean medical device market dropped in size in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it rebounded in 2021 to reach a record breaking height of USD 7.9 billion. Local production and exports are also experiencing significant year-on-year growth rates, as the below chart shows.   Made…

China The Chinese pharma market grew by eight percent from 2016 to 2018, slowed to four percent between 2018 and 2022 in part thanks to the introduction of volume-based procurement (VBP), and looks set to return to a healthier seven percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) up to 2025 driven by…

Denmark Denmark has long been a global frontrunner in medical research ethics and now boasts a more robust ethical infrastructure, spearheaded by a new body, The National Centre for Ethics. Head of the Centre’s Science and Ethics Division Helle Harder explains the rationale behind its formation, how ethics covers the quality…

Egypt Barely four and a half years ago, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi secured overwhelming re-election vowing to “place public health front and centre” of a radical reform and stabilization agenda. What has occurred subsequently has undoubtedly been momentous. Firstly, his administration unveiled ambitious plans to provide universal, cradle to grave,…