Chinas quickly gains an advantage over the USA in Biotech

On December 26, 2023, two doctoral students examine chemical products in a laboratory in the city of Xiwangzhuang, City of Zaozhuang, province of Shandong in China.

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Beijing with all attention in the US China competition in artificial intelligence, new studies indicate the rapid increase in China's biotechnology, especially for the development of pharmaceuticals and agricultural.

Of five critical tech sectors “China has the most immediate opportunity to overtake the United States in biotechnology,” said the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs on Thursday in the publication of a “critical and emerging technologies index”, covering AI, Biotech, Semikondk were.

While the United States is still the leader in all five, “” the tight US China gap [in biotech] suggests that future developments could quickly change the global balance of power, ”the report says.

The assessment reflects growing concerns in Washington. In fact, the US National Security Commission for aspiring biotechnology in a report in April has hit a more urgent tone, under the two years of research.

“There will be a Chatgpt moment for biotechnology, and when China arrives there first, no matter how fast we run, we will never catch up,” said the cross-party congress commission in the report and referred to the transformative chatbot published by Openai in the USA.

“Our window closes. We need a two-track strategy: let America innovate faster and slow China,” said the Commission. It is recommended to issue at least 15 billion US dollars over the next five years to support the domestic biotech sector.

The Chinese biotech industry has developed so far that the US and European pharmacists have spent billions in the acquisition of pharmaceuticals from China in the past few months that could treat cancer if they are commercial approval. In March, the British pharmaceutical AstraZeneca announced that the US dollars are 2.5 billion in a research and development center in Beijing.

The Harvard Belfer Center pointed out that China's Biotech strengths are due to its “dominance in pharmaceutical production and production” and have more human talent than the USA

China also has a more flexible regulatory regime and the ability to push things out faster, “said Cynthia Y. Tong, one of the authors of the Harvard Report, to CNBC in an interview on Thursday. She noted that the United States tends to have a longer approval process and more research and development times.

And just as China develops its biotech sector, reports from the USBiotech center of Cambridge and Boston reveal layoffs and empty laboratories.

A big strategy

China has used several years of plans and preferred government guidelines for a long time to promote the development of key technologies. Biotech is no different and is supported in 2007 on a high level.

“At the moment, the US government has no coherent, deliberate biotechnology strategy, while China is gaining in the ground thanks to its aggressive and carefully coordinated state-run initiatives,” said the US Security Commission.

The concern is that Chinese dominance in Biotech as well as Chinese restrictions on rare earths to hit automobile manufacturers can be another form of leverage for Beijing over the USA and other countries.

“The likelihood will work together [between the] In a way, the USA and China about anything is in a way in a way in the case of Biotech and Ki “the least likely due to the congress report, said Eric Rosenbach, director of defense, emerging technology and strategy in the Harvards Belfer Center. He was chief of staff from the US Department of Defense from 2015 to 2017.

He expects more US printing on China.

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It remains to be seen what this would mean in practice for companies – although some say that the future of biotech development is naturally global.

Insilico medicine, a startup that uses AI to reduce the cost of discovering medicines, is based on a global team, which is distributed throughout China, North America and the Middle East. On Tuesday, the company announced with a paper in Nature Medicine that it was the first to see successful clinical tests with an AI-discovered medication.

While the AI ​​work by Insilico in Canada and Abu Dhabi is typically carried out, the chemical tests and experiments are carried out in China, Zhavoronkov said and added that the head of clinical development is in Boston. He refused to comment on a commercialization time bar in view of discussions with supervisory authorities.

Other data show that China has exceeded the United States in the number of clinical studies carried out, recorded significant patent growth and has the most life sciences in organic construction activity worldwide.

Yang Fan, who previously worked in the pharmaceutical industry, is based in China, said that he expects the best biotech companies of the future to use the regulations of the different countries and use resources worldwide if they do not benefit from arbitrage options if they have different requirements and costs for entering in various markets.

“The Chinese market is like a large supermarket for everything that can be attached to AI or biotechnology,” he said, adding that new startups in China have to be “really good” to stand out. When AI lowers the innovation costs, Fan predicts that in Biotech “the real deepseek moment will probably take place in five years.”