EXPERT VIEW: Ethnobridging and the Asian market

Financial and competitive pressures mean that multinational pharmaceutical companies are constantly looking for ways to make the drug development process more effective and efficient, writes Stanford Jhee (pictured), vice president of Scientific Affairs, Early Phase, at Parexel International.

The same pressures are inducing them to expand their efforts into wider international markets. According to IMS , Asia has the world’s highest rate of pharmaceutical sales growth, rising at an average annual rate of 15% between 2007 and 2012. Naturally, this is contributing to a shift in industry focus from Europe to Asia.

Japan is currently the world’s second largest pharmaceutical market, and is growing at a faster rate than the European Union. Despite this, if projections by IMS hold true, China will overtake Japan by 2017 (currently it is third after the USA and Japan). Similarly, it has been suggested that clinical research in China for global drug development is increasing at an annual pace of 25%, in South Korea that figure’s even higher at 30%. Such rapid growth presents new opportunities and challenges for pharmaceutical organizations. Sponsors of pharmaceutical studies must take into account cultural differences, as well as regulations that require the use of clinical data from native populations. The time required to navigate regulatory environments can cause delays costing billions of pounds in potential lost sales.