Vas Narasimhan has high hopes for No­var­tis' Chi­na dri­ve as a block­buster drug gets a nod

No­var­tis has clinched a Chi­na ap­proval for its block­buster pso­ri­a­sis drug Cosen­tyx — the first of more than 10 nov­el med­i­cines that it plans to in­tro­duce in the coun­try with­in the next few years.

The ap­proval ar­rives just six months af­ter fil­ing and amid No­var­tis’ oth­er high-pro­file over­tures to es­tab­lish it­self as a key for­eign phar­ma play­er in Chi­na, from team­ing up with lo­cal biotechs and en­list­ing do­mes­tic tech gi­ant Ten­cent for dis­ease man­age­ment pro­grams to open­ing a new bio­med­ical re­search cen­ter in Bei­jing.

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