China CROs in Global Landscape
China’s contract research organizations (CROs) are developing rapidly, partly demonstrated by its rising revenue. Three China-based CROs—Wuxi AppTec, Pharmaron, and AsymChem—are ranked among the top 10 CROs in terms of 2022’s revenue. In the previous years, another Chinese CRO giant TigerMed usually took the third place domestically, but AsymChem zoom past it in 2022 because of the soaring income generated by COVID-19 drugs.
Table 1: Top 10 CROs with the highest revenues in 2022 |
CRO | Head- quarters | 2022 Revenue ($mn) | Revenue YoY Growth | 2022 Net Profit ($mn) | Net Profit YoY Growth |
Thermo Fisher Scientific | The U.S. | 44,915 | 15% | 6,950 | -9.94% |
Labcorp | The U.S. | 14,880 | -7.7% | 1,280 | -46.22% |
IQVIA | The U.S. | 14,410 | 7.8% | 1,091 | 12.94% |
ICON | Ireland | 7,741.4 | 45.4% | 505.3 | 229.87% |
Wuxi AppTec | China | 5,566.67 | 71.8% | 1,174 | 103% |
Syneos Health | The U.S. | 5,393 | 5.8% | 267 | 13.62% |
Charles River | The U.S. | 3,976 | 12.31% | 486.2 | 24.36% |
Pharmaron | China | 1,451 | 37.9% | 194 | 17.2% |
Medpace | The U.S. | 1,460 | 27.8% | 245.4 | 34.98% |
Asymchem Laboratories | China | 1,437 | 120.85% | 288 | 135.77% |
Tigermed | China | 1,002 | 35.9% | 394 | 39.3 |
Despite a few giants, China’s CROs in general take up a fairly small share of the global market. In 2021, The top 3 CROs in China, Tigermed, Wuxi AppTec, and Pharmaron account for 1.3%, 0.5%, and 0.3% market shares respectively. Bigger pieces are taken by multinational corporations (MNCs) headquartered in the U.S. IQVIA, LabCorp, and ICON took the lead with market shares of 16.3%, 12.5%, and 11.8%.1
Source: Huaon.com
The good news is that the whole pie is expected to become bigger. From 2017 to 2021, the global CRO market grew continuously. So did each segment of CRO services—drug discovery, pre-clinical study, and clinical study. According to Frost & Sullivan, the growing momentum is predicted to keep on.
Source: Frost & SullivanAs the following figure shows, both the size of China CRO market and its proportion in the world have been increasing since 2017. In 2021, China’s CRO market reached 64.77 billion yuan, taking up 13.2% of the global market.2 By Frost & Sullivan’s estimation, both the Chinese market and its percentage in the global market will continue to climb up in the coming years.
Source: Frost & SullivanChinese CROs’ Development Trajectory and Service Capability
Chinese CROs started off later than those headquartered in the Western world. Originated in the U.S. in the 1970s, CROs expanded rapidly in 1980s in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, and became quite mature in the late 1990s.
While for China, it was not until 1996 that the country saw the first CRO, the U.S. company MDS Pharmaceutical Services, on its land. In the next year, Quintiles set up its Beijing office. Afterwards, other international CROs also built offices in China.
China’s local CROs emerged at the beginning of the 21st century. The year of 2000 witnessed the birth of Wuxi AppTec. Afterwards, a crop of Chinese domestic CROs popped up and developed fast since China started to permit clinical trial sponsors to entrust trial-related tasks to CROs, as stated in the first version of Good Clinical Practice (GCP) that took effective in 2003.
Despite rapid growth, most Chinese CROs are not as developed as their multinational peers, such as IQVIA, LabCorp, and ICON. Big-sized Chinese CROs, including Wuxi AppTec, Pharmaron, and Tigermed, have reached out to other parts of the world and diversified their service portfolios. Small-and-medium-sized Chinese CROs are not so developed in their research capabilities, some providing regulatory affair services only.
The following table includes the major Chinese players in the CRO industry, with their revenue changes from 2021 to 2022.
Table 2: 2022 and 2021 Revenues of Major Chinese CROs |
CRO | 2022 Revenue （RMB mm） | 2021 Revenue （RMB mm） | YoY Growth |
Wuxi AppTec | 39,354.8 | 22,902.4 | 71.80% |
Pharmaron | 10,266.28 | 7,443.77 | 37.90% |
Tigermed | 7,085.5 | 5,213.5 | 63.30% |
Asymchem Laboratories | 10,230.18 | 4,632.12 | 120.90% |
Porton Pharma Solutions | 7,034.80 | 3,105.15 | 126.55% |
ChemPartner | 1,326.58 | 1,690.68 | -21.54% |
Joinn Laboratories | 2,267.97 | 1,516.68 | 49.54% |
Shanghai Medicilon | 1,658.93 | 1167.23 | 42.12% |
Boji Medical Technology | 423.68 | 324.2 | 30.68% |
OBiO Technology | 291.30 | 254.95 | 14.26% |
Beijing CTSMED Pharmaceutical Technology | Not revealed |
ClinChoice | Not revealed |
Overall, Chinese CROs have been strengthening their services in three aspects:
1) Deploying more resources on knowledge- and technology- based value-added services;
2) Expanding along the value chain to provide one-stop services, covering drug discovery, pre-clinical study, pre-approval clinical study, filing & registration, as well as post-approval regulatory affairs and phase IV clinical trials.
3) Enhancing the ties with local universities, R&D institutes, hospitals, and pharma companies for more talents, government funds, and clinical trial resources.
Given the international teamwork and progressing capabilities of the leading Chinese CROs, they can be exceptional partners of overseas pharmaceutical companies which aim to acquire China’s marketing authorization for their new drugs.
