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The nature of Asian biopharmaceutical innovation

Nature Biotechnology volume 32, pages 523–524 (2014)Cite this article

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In large commercial enterprises in the biopharmaceutical sector, the processes of globalization and downsizing of research have been accompanied by the adoption of dispersed innovation networks, where R&D projects are no longer completed in individual laboratories, but rather distributed among a global network of smaller players1. At the same time as the private sector has established R&D centers in emerging economies and the use of contract research, national governments in these countries have also invested considerable funds to galvanize biopharmaceutical innovation. Because of the difficulty of gathering reliable and comparable statistics on the biopharmaceutical sector in different countries, the true extent of biopharmaceutical innovation in emerging economies remains unclear. Previous studies have gathered information on R&D spending, publication output or venture capital funding as a measure of biopharmaceutical innovation. Another way of benchmarking innovative drug development is to analyze the number of biopharmaceutical inventors originating from different countries on the basis of their US patent output. Here I present the results of a preliminary analysis suggesting that India, China and South Korea lag very far behind the United States and Europe in terms of this traditional measure of biopharmaceutical innovation.

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  1. DrugPatentWatch.com and Thinkbiotech, Washington, DC, USA

    Yali Friedman

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  1. Yali Friedman
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Correspondence to Yali Friedman.

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Friedman, Y. The nature of Asian biopharmaceutical innovation. Nat Biotechnol 32, 523–524 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2933

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