Medical tourism? Chinese novel treatment developers explore alternative opportunities for profits

By Wang Fangqing

When it comes to expensive treatments such as cell therapy, companies usually do not wish to cut price heavily to join China’s national drug procurement scheme (NDPS). Rather, they have been actively looking for some intriguing, alternative opportunities, said speakers at DJSeedin innovation partnering conference held on April 20 in Shanghai.

“Speaking of medical tourism, an usual scenario is wealthy Chinese patients flying to developed countries for advanced treatments. But as Chinese biotechs are offering more similar advanced treatments at much lower costs, we are likely to see a reversed scenario, which means more foreign patients might come to China for high level treatments,” said Fu Xin, chief financial officer at JW Therapeutics.