Western drugmakers have spent record sums on medicines developed in China in recent years. Now they are going one step further — using Chinese hospitals to test experimental cell and gene therapies on humans for the first time.
Over the past 18 months pharma groups, including AstraZeneca, Sana Biotechnology and Tempest Therapeutics, have pursued so-called investigator-initiated trials (IITs) with Chinese partners to take advantage of a fast-track route into clinical testing.