China’s Rise in Drug Development Looms Over U.S.

For decades, an annual gathering of oncologists has featured drug trials that were run mainly at American and European hospitals.

But at this year’s meeting, which is being held in Chicago this weekend, the signs are everywhere of China’s ascendance as a powerhouse in drug development — and of the threat that many believe it poses to American biotechnology.

The clearest sign: In what appears to be a first, one of the conference’s five coveted headliners is a presentation of a clinical trial conducted only in China.

That milestone at the meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, or ASCO, reflects the dizzying growth of China’s biotechnology sector. In just a few years, it has transformed from a sleepy industry into a juggernaut rapidly inventing and testing cutting-edge medicines.

“This tells us that the Chinese biotech industry has arrived,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, a professor at Johns Hopkins who has attended the ASCO meeting every year since 1989.

But a growing contingent of U.S. officials, executives and doctors worry that the shift in drug innovation to China poses dangerous risks for research, American patients and biotech workers. They raise concerns about losing control over new medicines and about ceding America’s longstanding dominance in the field.