CHINA LEX PHARMA LAW NEWSLETTER
Vol. 1, No. 27 - December 1, 2000
TOPICS THIS ISSUE:
- Australia's Pharmanet Boosts China Pharma E-Commerce
- Veterinary Medicine Sold as Human Pharmaceuticals
- China's Bioengineering Pharma Industry Grows
- Gambro Sells Dialysis Equipment to China
- First Gene Chip in China Developed
Australia's Pharmanet Boosts China Pharma E-Commerce
PharmaNet Online Ltd, a major investor in the Shanghai Pharmaceutical Business Network Company, (SPBN) announced this week that its investment in SPBN is on the verge of being declared a Sino-Foreign Joint Venture company in China.
The project involves the development of an Internet-based network linking hospitals, pharmacies, major drug companies and doctors for distribution of pharmaceuticals to hospitals and health centers around Shanghai. Other investors in the project include the Chinese Government and one of China's leading pharmaceutical manufacturers, the Shanghai Pharmaceutical Company.
SPBN will be transformed from a Chinese, domestically registered company to a Sino-Foreign Joint Venture company once the Shanghai Industrial Company joins the Shanghai Pharmaceutical Investor in SPBN. This is expected to occur within the next few weeks.
Following the implementation of the network, the project hopes to expand to other Chinese cities, with the goal of establishing a national pharmaceuticals exchange system. In its more advanced form, the SPBN will include a Pharmaceutical Trading Exchange, allowing end users of pharmaceutical products, such as hospitals, to order products through traders, who will establish prices, and place and confirm orders.
SPBN has received a high level of support from the Chinese government: its official status as a "National Demonstration Platform" for e-commerce essentially gives approval from central government's drug agency to drive the introduction of information technology into a field that historically has been behind the West.
PharmaNet's Chairman, the Honorable Neville Wran, commented in his address to company shareholders: "This by far the most significant development for the company since it became involved in the China project."
(Source: AAP Newsfeed)
Veterinary Medicine Sold as Human Pharmaceuticals
A man licensed to sell veterinary medicine has been arrested for marketing the expired products as human pharmaceuticals.
Beginning in early 1999, the unidentified man began selling the medicine to unsuspecting consumers in Southwestern China as a way to supplement his income. It is estimated that he made approximately RMB 1 million (US $120,000) in the venture.
Using a rented workshop and fake labels, he concocted 150 types of supposedly "Western" medicine.
The prevalence of such counterfeit drugs has raised an alarm in recent months after several cases of patient deaths were reported after being inadvertently prescribed counterfeit products, sometimes by hospitals.
(Source: Agence France Presse)
China's Bioengineering Pharma Industry Grows
The biopharma market in China is small but has the potential to grow between 15 percent and 20 percent per year in the next 15 years, according to industry sources.
The total output of the biopharma industry in 1997 was US $1.5 billion, and there are currently about 500 biotech companies in China. The major biopharma products include Interferon, EPO (erythroprotein), CSF (colony stimulating factor), Rh-GH (recombinant human growth hormone), Rh-insulin (recombinant human insulin), and genetically engineered hepatitis B vaccine.
The total output of the biopharma industry in China is expected to expand to US $5 billion by 2005 and US $14 billion by 2015.
(Source: China Pharma News)
Gambro Sells Dialysis Equipment to China
Gambro AB, a leading international medical technology and healthcare company, recently announced that it, through its subsidiary Gambro China Ltd, Hong Kong, concluded and executed a major sales contract covering dialysis equipment for China. The sales mainly include hemodialysis machines, central water treatment systems, acute renal care machines and disposables that are delivered to 13 hospitals in China. The sales contract has been made possible by a government-turn-commercial loan project supported by various Chinese government authorities, especially the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance.
(Source: Business Wire)
First Gene Chip in China Developed
A gene chip (the SPGC-2000 DNA chip - the first of its kind in China), which is used to detect hepatitis B and C and the AIDS virus, has been put into production on a trial basis.
The chip was designed and developed by Shaanxi Chaoqun Science & Tech Co.
(Source: China Pharma News)
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