Glob­al Trend Da­ta Shows 50% of New Tri­als Have Sites in Asia Pa­cif­ic

The Asia Pa­cif­ic re­gion, which has more than 6,772 tri­al sites each with ac­cess to an av­er­age of 2,136 mil­lion peo­ple, has con­sid­er­able un­der­uti­lized ca­pac­i­ty pre­sent­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty for growth in multi­na­tion­al tri­als in the re­gion. 

De­mand for Asia Pa­cif­ic tri­al sites is strong with al­most half of the more than 27,000 clin­i­cal tri­als ini­ti­at­ed in 2021 hav­ing in Asia Pa­cif­ic, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est analy­sis from Glob­al­Da­ta in a new re­port ti­tled State of the Glob­al Biotech Land­scape: Where the Op­por­tu­ni­ties Lie.

Down­load the re­port here.

The da­ta shows al­most 12,900 of these tri­als had Sites in Asia Pa­cif­ic.

Asia Pa­cif­ic has al­so seen high Phase-lev­el growth trends over the 5-year analy­sis pe­ri­od to 2022.

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• Phas­es I and II were dom­i­nat­ed by Asia Pa­cif­ic, which served as a tri­al lo­ca­tion in 57% and 49% of tri­als, re­spec­tive­ly.
• US and EU re­mained sta­ble at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20% at phas­es I through III.
• RoW rep­re­sen­ta­tion is low in phas­es I and II but on par with the US and EU in phase III.

Glob­al Tri­als Growth by Ge­og­ra­phy

Since 2017 tri­als ini­ti­at­ed in Asia Pa­cif­ic in­creased by al­most 10%, con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to glob­al ther­a­peu­tic de­vel­op­ment, while in the US and RoW, growth was less than 2%, while EU growth was just un­der 3%.

Asia Pa­cif­ic tri­als ex­pe­ri­enced sub­stan­tial year-on-year growth wit­ness­ing a CA­GR of 9.8%.

Since 2017 Eu­rope has been the sec­ond fastest grow­ing re­gion, with a YoY growth rate just one third that of Asia Pa­cif­ic (2.9% with a to­tal of 5,000 tri­als in 2021). Mean­while the US has had the least num­ber of tri­als in 2021 (4,900) and slow­est growth of just 1.5% year-on-year 2017-2021.

Chi­na Biotech Growth

Chi­na has be­come a glob­al biotech pow­er­house with sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­nal and glob­al growth. From 2017-2021, Chi­nese-spon­sored mul­ti-coun­try tri­als have grown by 68%, while sin­gle-coun­try tri­als have grown by 128%.

Site Den­si­ty & Ca­pac­i­ty Com­par­isons

The Glob­al­Da­ta analy­sis not­ed that the Asia Pa­cif­ic re­gion, which has more than 6,772 tri­al sites each with ac­cess to an av­er­age of 2,136 mil­lion peo­ple, has con­sid­er­able un­der­uti­lized ca­pac­i­ty pre­sent­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty for growth in multi­na­tion­al tri­als in the re­gion.

• 60% of Phase I tri­als are be­ing con­duct­ed in Asia Pa­cif­ic
• 50% of Phase II tri­als are be­ing con­duct­ed in Asia Pa­cif­ic
• 36% of Phase 3 tri­als are be­ing con­duct­ed in Asia Pa­cif­ic

Of tri­als ini­ti­at­ed in H1 2022:

• APAC ac­counts for the great­est pro­por­tion of ear­ly phase de­vel­op­ment with al­most 60% of Phase I tri­als be­ing con­duct­ed in this re­gion.
• For Phase II tri­als, 50% are run in APAC, while US and EU re­tain rough­ly 18% and 20% of tri­als, re­spec­tive­ly.
• By Phase III, in­ter­na­tion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion be­comes more uni­form, how­ev­er, APAC con­tin­ues to con­tribute the largest pro­por­tion of tri­als with 36%.

Clin­i­cal Tri­al Shift to In­clude DCTs

“DCTs have grown be­tween rough­ly 10-20%. The ex­cep­tion to this is the growth with­in Phase I tri­als in APAC, which wit­nessed al­most 60% growth over the same time span.” Glob­al­Da­ta

De­cen­tral­ized or vir­tu­al tri­als (DCTs/VTs) can op­ti­mize the clin­i­cal tri­al process. DCTs in­volve web and mo­bile de­vice-en­abled tools to in­crease tri­al par­tic­i­pa­tion, re­ten­tion, and da­ta col­lec­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing chal­leng­ing times. In ad­di­tion, this of­fers ac­cess for peo­ple who may have been pre­vi­ous­ly ex­clud­ed due to lo­ca­tion.

DCTs have grown across the board over the analy­sis pe­ri­od be­tween rough­ly 10-20% in­di­cat­ing strong sec­tor in­ter­est in these ad­vanced tech­nolo­gies. The ex­cep­tion to this is the growth with­in Phase I tri­als in Asia Pa­cif­ic, which wit­nessed al­most 60% growth over the same time pe­ri­od.

“With just short of 13,000 tri­als in 2021, near­ly dou­ble dig­it 5-year tri­al growth, and a large­ly un­tapped ur­ban­ized pop­u­la­tion, Asia Pa­cif­ic is po­si­tioned as an ide­al re­gion for con­tin­ued clin­i­cal tri­al growth.” Glob­al­Da­ta

Op­por­tu­ni­ties in Asia Pa­cif­ic

Con­nect­ing many of the met­rics dis­cussed so far, a clear clus­ter­ing ef­fect presents it­self. The US, EU, and RoW re­gions all group around 4,000-5,000 2021 tri­als and 1%-2% 2017-2021 tri­al growth, with a dis­crep­an­cy emerg­ing be­tween the sat­u­ra­tion of the US and EU com­pared with RoW. The strik­ing out­lier, how­ev­er, is Asia Pa­cif­ic. With just short of 13,000 tri­als in 2021, near­ly dou­ble dig­it 5-year tri­al growth, and a large­ly un­tapped ur­ban­ized pop­u­la­tion, Asia Pa­cif­ic is po­si­tioned as an ide­al re­gion for con­tin­ued clin­i­cal tri­al growth.

More­over, many coun­tries with­in this re­gion have his­tor­i­cal­ly been wel­com­ing to biotech R&D, such as the in­no­va­tion re­bates and in­cen­tive schemes in Aus­tralia and the con­tin­ued in­vest­ment of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment in biotech clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

In­vest­ment Trends

COVID-19 al­so stim­u­lat­ed a surge in in­vest­ment in the biotech in­dus­try. In the US IPO deals jumped from 49 worth $5.6Bn in 2019 to 75, worth over $18Bn the next year. In Asia Pa­cif­ic, the num­ber of biotech IPOs dou­bled and the val­ue near­ly tripled to 55 deals worth $9.4Bn over the same time­frame. The post-COVID-19 re­turn to pre-2020 growth in Asia Pa­cif­ic demon­strates the sus­tained op­por­tu­ni­ty with­in this re­gion.

Oth­er macro­eco­nom­ic cy­cles are rel­e­vant forces on the biotech clin­i­cal land­scape. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of an im­pend­ing re­ces­sion may coun­ter­act much of the in­vest­ment seen in the last few years. A loss to the scale of the 2008 fi­nan­cial cri­sis would be worth $100B in glob­al eq­ui­ty of­fer­ings if repli­cat­ed to­day. How­ev­er, the val­ue of biotech com­pa­nies may be in­su­lat­ed from the brunt of the eco­nom­ic down­turn, as seen by the re­turns of the S&P Biotech ETF re­main­ing strong com­pared to the S&P 500 in the wake of 2008.

Even with the cur­rent un­cer­tain­ty, sus­tained growth in the biotech and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal de­vel­op­ment in­dus­tries is al­most cer­tain. While re­gions like the US and Eu­rope have his­tor­i­cal­ly been an­chors for clin­i­cal pro­grams, bur­geon­ing tri­als met­rics and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to huge pools of po­ten­tial sub­jects in Asia Pa­cif­ic present a de­sir­able des­ti­na­tion for de­vel­op­ers across the world.