China Leads the World in Clinical Trial Numbers for the First Time

A data report from GlobalData shows that the United States is no longer the global leader in clinical trials. In recent years, the number of clinical trials underway in China has been steadily increasing and has surpassed that of the U.S.

Industry-Sponsored Clinical Trials for Innovator Drugs 丨Image source: Global Data

In 2024, China registered over 7,100 clinical trials on the World Health Organization’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). The U.S. registered about 6,000 trials. A report from the commercial real estate services company CBRE in April noted that by the end of 2024, Beijing and Shanghai had more laboratories and R&D facilities under construction than any other market globally, with Boston ranking third. The CBRE report also mentioned that over the past decade, the number of pharmaceutical and medical technology patents in China increased by 379%.

Well-known Wall Street investment bank Stifel predicts that this year, 37% of the molecules licensed by major pharmaceutical companies will come from China. Chinese biotech companies have shifted from generic drug development to dominating new therapies in fields such as cancer treatment and autoimmune diseases. In recent years, frequent licensing deals between multinational pharmaceutical companies and Chinese firms have confirmed this shift, with the 2022 licensing deal between Summit and Akeso regarded as a landmark event. Other examples include new investments in China by Pfizer, GSK, Sanofi, and Novartis.

This change has attracted attention from some professionals in the U.S., who believe China is ahead of the U.S. in biotechnology. They argue that policymakers need to invest substantial resources in this field over the next five years to maintain competitiveness. The Trump administration’s cuts to funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and university biomedical research may cause the U.S. to fall further behind.

Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that when U.S. pharmaceutical companies license compounds from China, funds that might have supported some U.S. innovation centers are redirected. With the growing number of new drug developments, clinical trials are also surging. He believes that unless the U.S. takes steps to make domestic drug development easier, this trend will accelerate.

Stifel analyst Tim Opler mentioned in a recent report that current trends such as higher innovation levels in China’s biotech sector and the booming Hong Kong market are likely to accelerate.