CAR-T PROGRESS IN CHINA
environment is ideal. “CAR-Ts require a personalised and intellectually sophisticated approach, so you can see why your retired physicians and scientists would gravitate towards something like that, which is why this area has exploded in the country.” This research landscape, which “sea turtles,”
or Chinese scientists who have returned to the country after training abroad, are spearheading, is another contributing factor to the growth of specialised research. Several years ago, the Chinese government made a conscious effort to develop CAR-T locally and invested a lot of money and resources in setting up hospitals and infrastructure, which is critical for this kind of research, says Dr Samir Parekh, director of Translational Research in Myeloma at the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York. While the development of most CAR-Ts is led
by commercial companies in both the US and China, both have universities and hospitals that have been regularly involved in CAR-T development. For China, these are the Shenzhen Geno-Immune Medical Institute, Xuzhou Medical University, and Zhejiang University. Even if a US academic centre makes a CAR-T, which can cost over $100,000, not all have GMP manufacturing facilities to then manufacture them on a wide scale, says Parekh. It’s not easy to make a home-grown CAR-T, unless you have a big funding source, he adds.
Domestic versus international pharma China’s race for domination in this field means that of the 10 companies involved in the development of the most CAR-T drugs since 2010, six are based in China. Considering the initial approval, unsurprisingly, Novartis is one of the two biggest developers of CAR-T therapies – the other being Bristol Myers Squibb. Between 2014 and 2016, GlobalData
identified 18 new drugs being developed by one of the two companies, equal to 10% of all new CAR-T therapies during the period. Each company’s rate of new CAR-T development has slowed in recent years – collectively they were responsible for just 1% of new drugs identified since 2019. In China, on the other hand, CAR-T research is undertaken by specialist biotechs. For the 10 biggest developers of CAR-T therapies in China, over 80% of their developed drugs since 2010 are CAR-T therapies. China’s top CAR-T developers are newer and
more specialised than the West’s. Earlier this year, Legend Biotech, one of the first Chinese companies to make a splash with its CAR-T research, bagged a US Food and Drug Administration approval for Carvykti (ciltacabtagene autoleucel) that it co-developed with Janssen Biotech in multiple myeloma. Carvykti has a Breakthrough Therapy Designation in China. Parekh, who was involved in one of the
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