AstraZeneca puts faith in innovation

Multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is bullish about China's role as a global innovation powerhouse, underpinned by the country's sound prospects as well as its growing innovation capability in new and emerging sectors, its top executive said.

Pascal Soriot, global CEO of AstraZeneca, said in an exclusive interview with China Daily that the company is investing more in research and development in the world's second-largest economy rather than merely in manufacturing, in order to achieve its goal of "In China, for global", which means leveraging China's supply chains to produce and export medicines, while also cooperating with Chinese partners to discover new medicines and develop them globally.

"China will become, or actually has already become a big engine of innovation in our industry," Soriot said, pointing to "enormous innovations "across various pharmaceutical technologies happening in the country, including gene therapies, cell therapies, antibody-drug-conjugates, as well as recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence achieved by Chinese AI companies such as DeepSeek.

"In recent years, we've invested more and more in R&D, innovation and science to actually not only bring our medicines to patients in China but also to leverage the innovation that exists here and work with local biotech companies or academic institutions to come up with new products and develop them globally."

Soriot's remarks came as the United Kingdom-based pharmaceutical giant announced on Friday an investment of $2.5 billion in Beijing to establish its sixth global strategic R&D center, together with major research and manufacturing agreements.

The new R&D center, AstraZeneca's second in China following the one in Shanghai, will advance early-stage research and clinical development, and will be enabled by an AI and data science laboratory. The company already has two such centers in Europe, and two in the United States.

"We basically have made China a critical part of our global organization. Some companies use China simply as a distribution network, but for us, China is a key part of our core R&D engine," Soriot said. "Our team here in China is now leading the development of global projects."

With an investment of $2.5 billion over the next five years, AstraZeneca will accelerate the establishment of new R&D collaborations in the country. For instance, it has a strategic partnership with Beijing Cancer Hospital in translational research, data science and clinical development. It is also signing two collaboration and licensing agreements with two local startups to discover multispecific antibodies and to develop macrocyclic peptides.

In addition, AstraZeneca is launching a new joint venture with Shenzhen, Guangdong province-based BioKangtai, to develop, manufacture and commercialize innovative vaccines for respiratory and other infectious diseases. This will be AstraZeneca's first and only vaccine manufacturing facility in China.

"We can see here the development of new quality productive forces is leading to breakthrough innovation in artificial intelligence, of course, and across many industries, including the pharmaceutical industry. It's also leading to a whole pool of talented scientists that are now inventing for the future of medicine," Soriot said.

"You are going to realize that in our industry, innovation started accelerating in China only four to five years ago … China has made enormous progress and has come from being a follower to becoming a leader today in our sector in terms of innovation and coming up with new medicines over the last five to six years."

The chief executive also said the company is aligning itself with China's pursuit of opening-up and common prosperity, making sure everybody benefits.

For instance, as part of the new investment, the company has a commitment to a program that aims to help doctors and patients in remote parts of China.

He also advocated for global collaboration in science and technology, saying it is very important to keep the world connected so that everybody can collaborate across geographies and share knowledge to benefit the world as a whole.

AstraZeneca's revenue in China reached $6.41 billion last year, ranking top among multinational pharmaceutical companies in the country.

liuzhihua@chinadaily.com.cn