China's Drug Discovery Boom Challenges U.S. Biotech Lead
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- Michel Sadelain, director of Columbia's Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy, said at the STAT Breakthrough Summit East that China now runs more CAR-T cell therapy clinical trials than the U.S. — even though CAR-T technology originated in New York City.
- China's dual-track regulatory system enables "investigator initiated trials" (IITs) for cell and gene therapy, and since 2018 these have enrolled over 30,000 participants across mainland China — twice the number in typical drug trials overseen by a national regulator, per a 2025 analysis.
- A Stony Brook University analysis found China's new drug discovery output has tripled since 2018 while American output has remained comparatively flat.
- University of California, San Diego researchers forecast Thursday that China's public spending on research is likely to surpass U.S. spending within 2-3 years.
- Federal science cuts under the second Trump administration — including shattered research partnerships with academia and reductions to the federal science workforce — are accelerating the erosion of U.S. biotech dominance built since World War II.
- Biogen's Jane Grogan and Bristol Myers Squibb's Robert Plenge reframed China's rise as a partnership opportunity, saying global competition should "force us in the United States to say, how can we redesign and rethink about early development clinical trials?"
- Exelixis board chair Stelios Papadopoulos dismissed the threat narrative: "There's a lot of smart people there and smart people are good people, so I'm not worried."
Why it matters: If China's public research spending surpasses the U.S. within 2-3 years — as UC San Diego researchers forecast Thursday — and Chinese drug output has already tripled since 2018 while U.S. output stayed flat, American control over global pharmaceutical standards faces a structural realignment. Trump-era federal science cuts are accelerating the shift just as China's IIT system enrolls 30,000+ patients in cell and gene therapy trials at twice the pace of standard drug trials.
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