Vaccine industry fights to upgrade the future or the only high growth market

When people have not yet come out of the shadow of the failure of the Chongqing Beer Hepatitis B vaccine study, the world’s first vaccine for the prevention of hepatitis E successfully obtained a national new drug certificate and production symbol. The news once again establishes people's confidence in the vaccine market.

"The next 10 years, the Chinese vaccine industry will have 10 times the expansion of space." Zhi-Sheng Jiang, chairman of Zhi-Sheng Jiang had made such a forecast for the domestic vaccine market.

The vaccine industry has long been regarded as an industry full of great opportunities. Taking Germany, which has a population of about 80 million people, as an example, vaccine sales reached 2.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2009, and adult vaccine market share accounted for 45% of Germany. China’s population is now about 18 times that of Germany. It takes 10 years to reach half of Germany’s market size. In the next 10 years, the Chinese vaccine market should have a scale of more than 100 billion yuan.

In the “2011-2016 China Veterinary Industry In-depth Survey and Investment Prospects Forecast Report” issued by Champion Consulting, it is mentioned that the future vaccine market will still maintain a growth rate of more than 20%. Among them, Class I vaccines provided free by the state will maintain a growth rate of around 15%, and Class II vaccines voluntarily sponsored by citizens at their own expense will maintain a growth rate of around 20%.

Based on this, industry insiders have boldly asserted that the future domestic vaccine market will be the only high-growth market in the medical field.

Policy warm air blows

Only combing the country's relevant plans for the vaccine industry in the second half of last year can be described as "highly positive".

On October 26, the State Council adopted the “Vaccine Supply System Construction Plan” to propose that by 2015, a vaccine supply system that meets the needs of China’s economic and social development will be initially established to achieve normal state guarantees and increase emergency response capacity; by 2020, the vaccine supply system will be further developed. It is sound and complete, and has the strength to cope with emergencies and major epidemics simultaneously with developed countries. Moreover, the central government supports the expansion of vaccines required for national immunization programs, and the investment for key projects is about 9.4 billion yuan.

After the introduction of this plan, it was widely followed by people in the industry. Zhang Shiyuan, a research and development center of Southwest Securities, believes that this will be a major opportunity for the development of the domestic vaccine industry, and will inevitably bring about a more intense market reorganization.

Subsequently, the Ministry of Science and Technology released the "12th Five-Year Plan for Biotechnology Development" and proposed that during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, biomedical technology development will mainly include major infectious diseases such as AIDS, viral hepatitis and tuberculosis, and break through the clinical diagnosis. Key technologies such as prediction, early warning, vaccine development and clinical treatment, and the development of new diagnostic reagents and new vaccines and other biological products.

The favor of the policy has allowed the domestic vaccine market to have more room for development. The huge vaccine market has immediately attracted competition from domestic and foreign capitals. The domestic vaccine manufacturers such as Tiantan Bio, Hualan Biotech, Zhifei Biotech, and Shuanglu Pharmaceutical have all taken action to divide the domestic vaccine market into “cakes” through project cooperation and overseas R&D bases.

The foreign capital is even more riveting and adopts the “curve outsourcing” method such as M&A to accelerate the pace of influx into the Chinese vaccine market. Merck & Co., Ltd. announced the establishment of an Asian R&D headquarters in Beijing; Novartis acquired an 85% stake in Tianyuan Biotechnology for US$125 million and received approval from the Ministry of Commerce; Merck & Co., Ltd. and China National Pharmaceutical Group signed a memorandum of strategic cooperation on the human papilloma virus. Products such as vaccines are sold in China for cooperation and so on.

The key 10 years

Vaccines are facing the investment boom and are also facing R&D tests. The vaccine industry's long-term cycle, high investment, high risk characteristics, and lack of a complete domestic design plan have made Yin Weidong, general manager of Beijing Kexing Bio-products Co., Ltd. feel, “It is very necessary to comprehensively plan and continuously improve the vaccine supply system. Integrate existing resources, increase investment, improve vaccine supply capacity and product quality, meet the needs of conventional and emergency immunization needs."

At present, China can produce 49 kinds of vaccines for preventing 27 kinds of diseases, most of which are monovalent and attenuated live vaccines. However, almost all of them are imitations, and there are very few original ones. The developed countries in Europe and the United States mostly use combined vaccines, inactivated and combined vaccines.

"Comparison of domestic and foreign research and development in vaccines, domestic and more to be concentrated in the field of children's vaccines, developed countries will cover not only children, but also the adult field and special vaccines for specific groups of immunodeficiency." Shanghai Runze Biotechnology Co., Ltd. CEO Shi Li said in an interview with reporters that the low level of research and development, the decentralization of technical inputs, and the basic imitation of products have become a common problem among domestic vaccine manufacturers.

“It is no exaggeration to say that the total R&D input of the 36 domestic vaccine manufacturers cannot compete with any of the five giants of transnational vaccines: Sanofi Pasteur, Glaxo, Merck, Novartis and Pfizer.” Shi Li said.

In addition, no domestic vaccine manufacturer has ever been certified by the World Health Organization. This will directly lead to domestic vaccine manufacturers can not enter the international community of vaccine procurement list, but also can not expand the market like the multinational companies in the world.

However, this situation may be about to change.

According to Wu Yonglin, vice president of China Biotechnology Co., Ltd., the JE vaccine produced by the company is applying for certification. If passed successfully, it will become the first vaccine product that has received prequalification from the World Health Organization.

There are indications that the vaccine market is in the process of development and transformation. "Especially in the next 10 years, if domestic companies cannot solve the problem of new product R&D and production capacity, multinational companies will occupy the Chinese market, and China's vaccine manufacturers will face the danger of collapse." Jiang Rensheng said without hesitation. (Zhang Siwei)