China has overtaken India as one of the fastest-growing locations for drug trials, in a fresh sign of the importance of the world's most populous country to the pharmaceutical industry.
An analysis by the Financial Times of data on the U.S. National Institutes of Health website www.clinicaltrials.gov , one of the most comprehensive sites where researchers register their studies, shows that China has 274 clinical trials underway, compared with 260 in India.
The site also indicates that China now has a cumulative total of 510 completed or ongoing trials compared with 471 in India, which had until recently been ahead on both measures.
The trend reflects the medical industry's intensifying interest in China, which is growing rapidly as a result of rising incomes and expanding health coverage and is forecast to be the world's fifth-largest pharmaceuticals market by 2010.
Daniel Vasella, chief executive of Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, warned last month that he was likely to switch substantial future funding that could have gone to India to other countries, including China, because of a recent court ruling on patents.
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