Restoring The American Biotechnology Edge

By Michelle Longmire, MD

Fifty years after Genentech, the US share of early-stage drug programs has dropped from 48.2% to 37.4% while China's has quadrupled, and big pharma now licenses heavily from Chinese originators.

Michelle Longmire, MD, physician scientist and CEO of Medable, argues the cause is operations, not scientific superiority: studies start and enroll faster in China, and coordination adds less to cost. Two hypothetical biotechs with the same molecule, one in Boston and one in Shanghai, show how lost months become dilution and lost value. Longmire also flags the limits of China's edge, from regulatory scrutiny to US policy. Part 1 of a two-part essay, it asks whether the development machine gets rebuilt before the trend hardens into market structure.

Read the essay and test the argument yourself.