Despite political instability, Thailand’s healthcare sector has great prospects for growth due to its expanding middle class, public health service, supply of affordable medicine, and forthcoming membership of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Thailand has faced severe tests in recent years but is today emerging from them stronger. As…

Through greater government support for R&D, tax breaks for both foreign investors and domestic researchers and the creation of knowledge clusters, Thailand hopes to reposition itself as a regional R&D leader and pull itself out of the middle income trap. For a long time Thailand’s economy has been seen as…

biotech Local flagship company Boryung has found success with its newly developed angiotension receptor blocker (ARB) Kanarb. Nine molecules currently exist worldwide in this category of antihypertensives, and Kanarb is currently ranked eighth. “Boryung is the only domestic company that has developed a drug from start to finish, including outlicensing. Of…

clinical trials The growth of clinical trials in Korea has been remarkable in recent years. The number of clinical trials performed by multinationals has shot up from five in 2000 to 303 in 2012, with 367 clinical trials performed by local companies. In the same year, Seoul was ranked the number one…

Samsung Korea’s economy has been dominated for decades by chaebols, large family-owned business conglomerates like Samsung, Hyundai, and LG, known for their hierarchical structures and success in Korea’s traditional sectors. However, a number of these big businesses are today making investments in the life sciences area – and those that started…

R&D “When I left Janssen, I never imagined joining a Korean company,” recalls Choi Tae-Hung, sipping a freshly brewed yujacha tea in his office on a crisp autumn morning as he gazes down at the busy, sundrenched streets of Seoul below. “I thought that the global business of Korean pharmaceutical companies…

biotech On February second, the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare announced the start of a second round of financing to the biopharmaceutical industry, as part of the Global Pharmaceutical Industry Development Fund (GPIDF). A total of USD 123 million will be invested in Korean pharmaceutical and biotech companies for the…

generics   “The IMS Health figures show around three to four percent growth in the marketplace,” remarks Raymund Azurin, chief executive of Zuellig Pharma Philippines, “but we are now at a point in time where the business models in this market are changing. The rise of generics and increasing government intervention…

Before the introduction of universal healthcare (UHC), most major private hospitals in the Philippines had to rely on imported products. With the MNCs showing only limited interest in small volumes, all too often certain products would never actually make their way to market. It was a situation that skewed market…

china Signed in June 2010, the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China was set to reduce tariffs and commercial barriers between the two countries. Obviously, such a deal means a lot to Taiwanese companies; arguably much more than it does to Chinese businesses. But just because the agreement…

  The inclusion of healthcare as a priority on the presidential agenda has led to knock-on consequences that are being felt across the healthcare value chain in the Philippines. Universal healthcare coverage (UHC) has been cemented, which has led to a shift from branded medicines to generics, leading many players…

Array In Taiwan, biotech is finally booming, and more and more of the companies benefitting from this boom are listing on the Gre Tai Securities Market (GTSM), built with small to medium enterprises in mind, and tailored for companies that are part of emerging industries. But are these companies overvalued, and…