Qin Chuan

Chinese pharmaceutical companies are making progress in terms of intellectual property rights protection.

At least four new medicines developed under a key national project have received approval from the State Food and Drug Administration since 2002, when the project was launched to encourage innovation of new medicines and the modernization of the traditional Chinese medicine industry.

Intellectual property rights of the four medicines are owned by Chinese researchers and pharmaceutical companies, according to Yang Zhe, head of the biomedicine division of the Ministry of Science and Technology. Meanwhile, more than 20 new medicines have entered the stage of clinical experiments, Yang said.

Xiao Shiying, an official with the administrative centre for Agenda 21, China's centre for UN's global development project, said nearly 60 traditional Chinese medicines are being developed under the project.

Currently few of the medicines have been finished, Xiao said, but some are expected to be approved by the State Food and Drug Administration next year.

"The awareness of intellectual property right protection in the traditional Chinese medicine industry is far from enough," said Cai Zhongde, with the institute of traditional Chinese medicines at the Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Meanwhile, the technological strength of Chinese companies and research institutes is weak and therefore innovation is difficult to achieve, he said.

Although the number of patented traditional Chinese medicines has risen in recent years, the number of completely innovated ones remains relatively small, Cai said.

Yang said China began to pay more attention to the development of patented medicines in the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1996-2000). But it was not until the project was launched in 2002 that such an attempt was strengthened.

The project was launched by the Ministry of Science and Technology as one of the key national scientific and technological projects during the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-05).

It is expected that the project will help transform the Chinese pharmaceutical industry from a "copier" to an "innovator."

The ministry hopes to see a group of compound synthetic medicines, herbal medicines and bio-engineered drugs developed, whose intellectual property rights will be owned by Chinese companies or researchers.

Statistics from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a leading pharmaceutical company, show China is the seventh largest pharmaceutical market in the world with a value of US$6.8 billion from drugs in 2002.

It is estimated China's medical market will be US$14 billion by 2006 and US$24 billion by 2010.

However, China's own pharmaceutical industry is weak in the research and development of new products because it has long depended on replicating imported drugs, insiders say.

At present, Chinese companies put only 2 per cent of their sales income into development, compared with more than 20 per cent by leading pharmaceutical companies in the world.

More than 6,700 drug companies produce about 1,300 types of synthetic medicines in China, 97 per cent of which, however, are generic medicines.

With its entry into the World Trade Organization, China has pledged its commitment to greater protection of intellectual property rights on medicines, and the domestic pharmaceutical industry is expected to face more challenges.

(China Daily 05/31/2004 page5)