Takeda sees China emerging as global innovation hub

China will become a global model for research and development innovation within the next five years, a senior executive of Japanese pharmaceutical company Takeda said during a recent media interview in Shanghai.

The country is soaring in life sciences, and three elements — engineering, speed and innovation — are coming together to create a remarkable ecosystem in this sector and drive its success, said Andrew Plump, president of R&D at Takeda.

"Instead of happening overnight, such success took decades of thoughtful building, talent development, learning from outside China, and then piecing that together within the country to get where it is today," he said in the interview on Sept 10.

Regarding engineering, he said that China has infrastructure capability in talent, which allows it to do things at a cost and quality that are unique across the globe. In terms of speed, China is moving at a speed that redefines the industry, with infrastructure set up in a way that allows projects to move fast in the country, he said.

"And when we look at innovation and the objective measures of innovation, like primary author journals in top scientific journals, such as Science, Nature and Cell, we are seeing that China is already leading the world," Plump said.

He also pointed out that China has an impressive integration of the three factors that are critical to really innovate the life sciences industry: great science, entrepreneurial management to translate great science, and an infrastructure that includes government support and regulatory framework to enable innovation.

All the three have to add up, Plump said, adding that from his perspective, it just has been brilliant how those three have come together in China.

"I'm absolutely confident that it will happen in China for all of us to see 'zero to one' innovation level that is equal to or better than anywhere else in the world, and it is just starting," he said, adding that he was also impressed by the combination of the country's academic excellence, the accessibility of patient samples and biology, and the determination to translate them into results.

According to data from market consulting firm McKinsey & Company, China's share of projects in the global drug development pipeline rose to 26.7 percent last year, second only to the United States at 49.1 percent.

Wang Lin, R&D head of global regions and head of R&D China and the Asia-Pacific region at Takeda, said that the boom in Chinese innovation in this sector just kicked off a decade ago following regulatory reforms and the joining of venture capital and funding for biotech, and that real innovation has already been coming out over the past two to three years.

"Best-in-class innovations are emerging from China. In some collaborations that Takeda has with leading hospitals in Shanghai, we've already witnessed that potential first-in-class drug targets are coming out," said Wang.

"Innovation from China is exponentially going increasingly faster. With this speed, we'll see more 'zero to one' groundbreaking breakthroughs come out in another three to five years," she said, adding that she appreciated the country's closed-cycle innovation system where the innovators work closely and efficiently with the doctors and hospitals.

The company's TAK-861, potentially a first-in-class investigational oral medicine to treat a type of narcolepsy, a chronic sleeping disorder, was a recent example, Wang said. Takeda presented data from two global phase-III studies of TAK-861 at the 2025 World Sleep Congress held in Singapore earlier this month.

"China not only joined the phase-III research, but also the phase-I study, including large-scale dose exploration studies. That contributed to the overall phase-I data package globally," she said.

The continuous innovation momentum in China altered the company's strategy from "China catch-up" — bringing marketed portfolio elsewhere to Chinese patients — to "China for global", added Wang.