What is the CRO Industry?- 63.01 Billion Market Size of the CRO Industry

The CRO industry is an emerging industry developed in China in the past two decades. The pharmaceutical outsourcing industry originated in developed countries in Europe and the United States, but subject to high R&D costs, the industry has gradually shifted to emerging developing countries such as China and India. In 1996, MDS Pharma Service invested in the establishment of China’s first true CRO to engage in drug clinical research business. Later, multinational CROs such as Quintiles, Covance and Kendles began to set up branches in China. Due to the rapid development of China’s pharmaceutical industry, multinational pharmaceutical companies have begun to launch R&D businesses in China. At the same time, WuXi AppTec and Wise Chemicals focus on early chemical research, Zhaoyan New Medicine focuses on preclinical research services, and Tiger Medicine focuses on The rapid development of private enterprises engaged in clinical trial research has promoted the growth of China’s CRO industry.

In recent years, due to China’s economic development and the increase in national income, China’s pharmaceutical industry has developed rapidly. With the gradual clarification of national medical policies, the acceleration of medical reform and the expansion of the medical insurance market have provided a broad space for the development of drugs and medical devices. In order to quickly grab market share, domestic and foreign pharmaceutical companies have invested a lot of money in research and development to share the fruits of the rapid development of the industry. As an important link in the R&D industry chain of pharmaceutical companies, the CRO industry has obtained important development opportunities and the scale of the industry has grown rapidly.

China’s pharmaceutical industry is in a golden period of development, and the overall pharmaceutical R&D scale directly affects the development of pharmaceutical CRO. China’s pharmaceutical R&D industry started late, with insufficient technical capabilities in the early stages of development, and low R&D investment. However, it has achieved rapid development in recent years and has a lot of room for improvement. With the improvement of the R&D strength of Chinese pharmaceutical companies and the strengthening of the government’s supervision of generic drugs, such as the development of the consistency evaluation of generic drugs, the advancement of clinical trial data self-examination and verification work, China’s pharmaceutical R&D investment will continue to increase.

It is estimated that by 2021, China’s pharmaceutical R&D investment is expected to reach 29.2 billion U.S. dollars, with a compound annual growth rate of 20% from 2017 to 2021, and the proportion of total global pharmaceutical R&D investment in the same period will increase to 18.3%. Benefiting from the rapid development of China’s pharmaceutical industry, the market scale of China’s CRO industry has also expanded year by year. According to statistics, the market size of China’s CRO industry was approximately 22.93 billion yuan in 2013, and it increased to 63.01 billion yuan in 2017, with a compound growth rate of 22.4% from 2013 to 2017.