The characteristics of the layout of typical CRO enterprises in China and the reasons behind them are analyzed.

The Contract Research Organization, or short for Contract Research Organization, is an organization or organization that provides specialized outsourcing services to pharmaceutical companies and other pharmaceutical research and development institutions in the form of contracts.
CRO industry originated in the United States in the 1970s, the late 1980s in Europe, the United States and Japan and other countries have been rapid development, the late 1990s to a certain industry scale, has become an indispensable part of the pharmaceutical research and development industry chain.
recent years, thanks to the rise of innovative drugs and the consistent evaluation of generic drugs, the domestic CRO industry has accelerated the empowerment of innovative pharmaceutical companies, the domestic market is expected to exceed 10 billion U.S. dollars in 2021.
the same time, CRO enterprises have high professional requirements for employees, high demand, equipment capital investment and so on, so talent resources and university resources become the cro enterprise investment location of the main concern factors.
CRO enterprise profile and location characteristics of drug research and development is a high-risk, high-tech, high investment, long cycle and fine systematic project, innovative drugs research and development time cycle is long, high investment amount, and after the market patent protection period is only 20 years, how to reduce research and development investment, improve research and development efficiency, shorten the time to market of new drugs become a very important competitive advantage for pharmaceutical companies.
cro enterprises are in the research and development of pharmaceutical enterprises pain point, by virtue of its scale and professional advantages to meet the needs of pharmaceutical enterprises, to help pharmaceutical companies shorten the research and development cycle, reduce research and development costs, spread risk.
According to the Tufts Center for Drug Research and Development, the cycle of CRO-involved drug development can be shortened by 25-40% and by an average of 34.43%, while the average annual salary of research and development staff in foreign pharmaceutical companies is $330,000, while cro's research and development staff is paid an average of only $250,000 a year.
Figure 1 With or without CRO interventional research and development cycle comparison (week) Data source: Firestone Creation Collates Charting CRO Enterprises Based on Public Data Covering New Drug Screening, Route Design, Quality Research, Pharmacological Testing, Pharmacological Dynamics Research, Safety Evaluation, Clinical Trials and Drug Marketing At various stages, we can meet the needs of a large number of new pharmaceutical creation enterprises in biopharmaceutical industrial park, especially small and medium-sized micro-innovation enterprises, significantly reduce the cost of new drug research and development, effectively speed up the process of new drug creation, and promote a number of small and medium-sized micro-innovative enterprises drug research and development model innovation, is an important carrier of the core competitiveness of biopharmaceutical innovation cluster.
CRO enterprises as a key component of the pharmaceutical industry chain, site inspection factors and innovative pharmaceutical enterprises are very similar, including: industrial gathering, usually choose Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other pharmaceutical industry gathering areas to facilitate customer exchanges, market development, etc. ;
addition, because of the particularity of the industry, talent resources and university resources are the main concerns of preclinical CRO enterprise location.
1. The impact of human resources on the layout of CRO enterprises as knowledge and high-end talent-intensive industries, qualified professional personnel restrict the rapid development of CRO industry an important factor, to the leading domestic pre-clinical CRO enterprises, for example, the number of professional research and development personnel accounted for about 80% of the total number of employees, it can be seen that enterprises have a huge demand for professional research and development personnel. table
1 Domestic representative CRO enterprise research and development personnel ratio data source: listed company prospects at the same time, because the CRO industry on the professional and technical requirements of employees, labor costs in the total cost of service outsourcing enterprises in the proportion of 60% to 70%.
that is, the success of the company, and the company's talent pool and reserve level is closely related.
, large-scale high-quality pharmaceutical research and development professionals are the core competitiveness of CRO enterprises, is a key factor in the strategic layout of the early stage of the enterprise.
currently, China's CRO enterprises are mainly concentrated in the pharmaceutical industry's relatively mature North to Guangzhou and Yangtze River Delta region, of which Beijing and Shanghai account for about 50%.
addition, CRO enterprise site selection process will also consider Tianjin, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu and other high-resourced and relatively low cost of living cities, talent willing to come, but also stay.
Table 2 Domestic Representative CRO Enterprises Domestic Layout Source: Firestone Creation according to public information collated to domestic CRO leading enterprises drug Mingkangde as an example, talent apogee situation is its key consideration in the national layout expansion factors.
Wuxi Pharmaceuticals Mingkangde New Pharmaceutical Development Co., Ltd. was officially established in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province in 2000, and then set up its headquarters in Shanghai, in addition to taking into account the internationalization of Shanghai, Shanghai's attractiveness to high-end biopharmaceutical talents at home and abroad is one of the main reasons for Pharmaceutical Ming to choose Shanghai as its global headquarters.
2006, with the rapid growth of the company's business, in order to break through the talent bottleneck, while attracting more high-end northern biomedical talent to join, the company chose Tianjin as a second expansion base.
Tianjin has a large number of university resources, especially Nan kai University, Tianjin University and other well-known universities, training a large number of outstanding medical research and development professionals, for the rapid development of enterprises have made an indelible contribution.
Then, The Drug Ming chose Wuhan and Chengdu as the bases in the central and western regions, both of which are cities where universities gather and export a large number of biomedical professionals to society each year, and which, because of their central and western core areas, attract a large number of local professionals from the central and western regions who have been evacuated from the first-tier cities.
to choose the city where talents gather, not only can attract more and more professional talent, but also can reduce the labor cost of enterprises, which is the most important factor for CRO enterprises.
2. The influence of university resources on the layout of CRO enterprises With the continuous improvement of the supervision of the pharmaceutical industry and the complication of disease, drug research and development has become a high-tech, high-risk, high-investment and long-term complex project, and the requirements for CRO enterprises are becoming higher and higher.
not only need a large number of college-related professional graduates of high-quality personnel, but also need to introduce industry experts, university professors and other guidance, or with the university task force and other cooperation.
cooperation with universities can not only participate in major national issues, obtain the support of some scientific research funds, improve the research and development capabilities of enterprises, but also enhance the influence of enterprises in the industry, and play an important role in accelerating the development of enterprises.
in addition, in the process of pharmaceutical research and development outsourcing of nuclear magnetic resonance testing, mass spectrometrometer testing, high-efficiency liquid phase analysis, gas phase analysis, liquid joint analysis, spectral analysis, high-precision weighing and other means of detection and analysis are essential, but most of the relevant instruments rely on imports, prices generally in the hundreds of thousands are millions, for small enterprises, the purchase and maintenance costs are very large pressure, for the use of low frequency of instruments is also a great waste.
And pharmaceutical universities, related research institutes for the equipment configuration is relatively perfect, start-up CRO enterprises through cooperation with universities, the use of advanced equipment and equipment resources, not only can quickly improve research and development capabilities, while meeting the needs of research and development hardware, greatly reduce the operating costs of enterprises.
, whether it is to improve research and development capabilities or reduce operating costs, the rich resources of universities are attractive to CRO enterprises, especially start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises.
Taking Nanjing as an example, according to the Firestone Creation Database, Nanjing currently has more than 40 CRO enterprises, accounting for more than 6% of the number of CRO enterprises in the country, including Kingsley, Pharmaceutical Stone Technology, Warwick Pharmaceuticals and other leading domestic CRO enterprises.
abundant university resources is the key reason for Nanjing to attract CRO enterprises to Ning.
Nanjing has Nanjing University, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanjing Medical University and other biomedical colleges and universities, each year for the national pharmaceutical industry to provide about 10,000 outstanding pharmaceutical-related professional graduates, but also for the industry to provide research and development, talent and other resources, Nanjing Life and Health Industrial Park development is a unique advantage.
addition to providing a large number of industry talents, Nanjing's abundant university resources also provide CRO enterprises with a large number of convenient opportunities for scientific research cooperation and platform resources.
(login drug location, learn more park information) Table 3 CRO enterprises mainly gather urban colleges and universities and talent resources and related talent sources: Firestone creation according to public information finishing knots with the vigorous development of the domestic biopharmaceutical industry, CRO industry is in the stage of accelerated development and rapid expansion.
for CRO enterprises, talent is the first thing to consider when their business grows rapidly and breaks through the bottleneck.
close to colleges and universities, not only can it facilitate cooperation and exchange with universities, improve the company's research and development capabilities, but also can borrow the equipment of university platforms and other resources to reduce research and development costs.
For the government and china Merchants Park, if we can combine the elements of local industrial resources, we can formulate more attractive talent policies, attract professionals and high-quality colleges and universities, it will become a major advantage to attract CRO enterprises.
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