Evolving R&D for emerging markets

expected to overtake Europe in pharmaceutical sales, driven by growth in key emerging markets. For example, China is predicted to be the second largest pharmaceutical market after the United States by 2015. “Eighty-five percent of the world’s population lives in the emerging markets, and during the past 5 years, all real economic growth has come from these markets,” says Patrick Keohane, Vice President (VP) for R&D Asia Pacific at AstraZeneca. Such observations help to explain why many large pharmaceutical companies have increased their presence in emerging markets in recent years — in particular in China, but also in other countries including India, Brazil, Russia, Korea and Mexico (see BOX 1 for a case study). Notably, this growing presence is increasingly moving beyond the use of contract research organizations and marketing of established products to include early-stage research aimed at specific medical needs of patients in these regions. A diversity of medical need Meeting the medical needs of emerging markets is a complex task. “You have to be aware of the wealth pyramid and the fact that although there are many people at the top of the wealth pyramid who can afford the same medicines that are available in the United States and in Europe, there are many more who survive on significantly less money,” says Sandy Macrae, Senior VP for Asia Pacific, Japan, and Emerging Markets R&D at GlaxoSmithKline. Indeed, providing access to drugs First therapeutic cancer vaccine approved p421