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‘Innovation’ nation

Nature Biotechnology volume 37, pages 1264–1276 (2019)Cite this article

China is finally embracing biopharmaceutical innovation, but it is innovation that looks different from that in the West.

Lingshi Tan is the founder, chairman and CEO of dMed Pharmaceutical, a fast-growing contract research organization in Shanghai, his last stop in a long career in drug development. He lived through the Cultural Revolution in China before leaving for his PhD in the United States, and then worked for Schering-Plough and Pfizer before coming home. His story is one of return.

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Fig. 1: Size of pool of Chinese students in the United States annually from 2000 to 2018.
Fig. 2: Private investment in Chinese and European biotech companies.
Fig. 3: Countries where key discoveries for new therapeutic modalities have been made since biotech’s inception.
Fig. 4: Granted Chinese invention biotech patents by country of first filing, 2009–2018.
Fig. 5: Lagging life sciences.

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  1. Business Editor, Nature Biotechnology https://www.nature.com/nbt

    Brady Huggett

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  1. Brady Huggett
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Correspondence to Brady Huggett.

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Ties to the West

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Huggett, B. ‘Innovation’ nation. Nat Biotechnol 37, 1264–1276 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0306-9

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