Petrovax has agreed to supply oncology drugs from China

After limiting the presence of Western pharmaceutical companies in Russia, Russian players are forced to look for partners in Asia. Petrovax, which until last year belonged to Vladimir Potanin’s Interros, agreed with the Chinese Jiangsu Hengrui on the supply and subsequent localization of several oncological drugs, including camrelizumab, which belongs to the same class as Keytruda from the American MSD. But, despite the active development of the market, Chinese companies cannot yet compete with Western companies in terms of innovation and quality, experts are sure.

Petrovax has entered into a licensing agreement with Jiangsu Hengrui for a number of drugs, the key of which is the oncology drug camrelizumab, Petrovax told Kommersant. They clarified that camrelizumab is planned to be registered in Russia in 2024, followed by a phased localization of the drug in the country to the substance stage. Hengrui did not respond to Kommersant’s request.

Camrelizumab belongs to the PD-1 protein inhibitors, the same class as pembrolizumab (the original drug Keytruda from MSD) and nivolumab (Opdivo from the American BMS). According to Headway Company, pembrolizumab and nivolumab are among the leaders in government procurement in the oncology drugs segment in January-September 2023. During this time, government procurement operators purchased a total of 26.5 billion rubles of these funds.

Camrelizumab was approved in China for the treatment of liver cancer in 2020 and is being tested for other indications. An application from Jiangsu Hengrui and its partner from South Korea to register this drug in combination with another drug is currently being reviewed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Jiangsu Hengrui, according to its own data, has launched 13 drugs on the market. The company’s revenue at the end of 2022 amounted, according to Global Data, to $3.16 billion.

After the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian military conflict, many international pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Novartis, Sanofi, MSD, suspended investments in Russia, as well as conducting new clinical trials. As a result, Russian pharmaceutical manufacturers turned towards Asia, says Nikolai Bespalov, development director at RNC Pharma.

Thus, Binnopharm Group agreed with the Chinese Mabwell to license the production of a full cycle of several products based on monoclonal antibodies, the general director of the Russian company Rustem Muratov said in an interview with Kommersant in April (see Kommersant on April 27). Such an agreement on the localization of Chinese biosimilars adalimumab and denosumab in Russia was signed at the end of 2022. Binnopharm Group confirmed that they plan to organize the production of these drugs by spring, as previously stated.

Petrovax President Mikhail Tsyferov believes that Chinese companies in three to four years “will be able to become absolute leaders in new molecules.” Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturers have come to replace international players in Russia, but on the global stage they cannot yet compete with American and European companies, Ilya Yasny, head of scientific expertise at the venture fund LanceBio Ventures, is convinced. In China, in his words, they basically “repeat and catch up,” but they also make their own developments, although they are still inferior in quality to innovations to the developments of Western companies. In addition, the expert emphasizes, China, like Russia, is not among the countries with mature regulation of the pharmaceutical industry according to the WHO classification. Because of this, he said, for example, the American regulator treats data from China with great caution and pays special attention to dossiers submitted from there.

Polina Gritsenko