General Manager Wu Xiaoming of Lan Na Cheng
The 18th Frost & Sullivan China Growth, Innovation and Leadership Summit and the 3rd New Investment Conference Life Sciences New Investment Summit Forum was held in Shanghai from August 28th to 29th, 2024. The forum brought together over 40 industry leaders, biopharmaceutical companies, medical device enterprises, investment institutions, and professional service providers. With the theme of 'Adapting to Changes and Creating New Opportunities', the participants discussed new models of investment cooperation, aiming to build a closer, more efficient, and win-win cooperation network to jointly promote the vigorous development of the domestic and international life sciences industry.
At this forum, General Manager Wu Xiaoming delivered a keynote speech on 'Opportunities and Development in the Nuclear Medicine Industry'. Wu Xiaoming comprehensively elaborated on the difficulties and pain points in the development of the nuclear medicine industry, as well as the opportunities it faces.
Key points from Wu Xiaoming's speech:
Difficulties and Pain Points in Nuclear Medicine Development
Wu Xiaoming first pointed out that while the demand for medical isotopes in China will show explosive growth, the upstream of China's nuclear medicine industry faces the challenge of mainly relying on imports for medical isotopes. In the midstream of the nuclear medicine industry, there are currently few listed nuclear medicine products in China, and the listed ones are mainly traditional ones, with RLT precision therapeutic nuclear medicines waiting for breakthroughs. Compared to the diverse production methods and a well-established independent nuclear pharmacy network in the United States, China's nuclear pharmacies have been rapidly deployed in recent years, but their number is still less than that of the United States, and they are mainly concentrated in the central and eastern regions, with the industrial ecosystem still needing improvement. In the downstream of China's nuclear medicine industry, there are issues such as insufficient numbers of nuclear medicine pharmacies and practitioners. In addition, the low per capita ownership of large nuclear medical equipment restricts the development of nuclear medicine, and as a representative of precision medicine, its advantages have not been fully popularized, with the public lacking awareness of the important role of nuclear medicines in integrated diagnosis and treatment.
Opportunities and Development in Nuclear Medicine
Despite facing challenges, the nuclear medicine industry also has tremendous development opportunities. At the policy level, the country's intensive introduction of favorable policies is promoting the rapid development of the nuclear medicine industry, and the successive introduction of nuclear medicine review policies provides support for accelerating the launch of new nuclear medicines. In addition, nuclear medicine has huge market potential, with the global nuclear medicine market size continuously growing. According to MEDraysintell, it is expected to reach $39 billion by 2032. The Chinese nuclear medicine market also shows strong growth momentum, with Frost & Sullivan predicting that the Chinese nuclear medicine market size will reach 9.3 billion yuan by 2025.
The enthusiasm for the nuclear medicine field at home and abroad is constantly rising, with the entry of leading enterprises, the explosion of satellite products, and the active operation of capital all bringing new impetus to industrial development. In addition, the country's allocation of large medical equipment such as PET/CT has also promoted the development of nuclear medicine.
Although China's nuclear medicine industry faces many difficulties in the short term, such as insufficient radionuclide supply, few listed nuclear medicine products, especially therapeutic nuclear medicines still mainly traditional ones, an imperfect industrial ecosystem, and a small number of nuclear medicine departments and personnel at the application end, it is believed that against the backdrop of vigorously developing nuclear medicine at home, led by policies and driven by innovation, more capital and enterprises will participate in nuclear medicine, which will prompt more integrated diagnosis and treatment nuclear medicine products to be launched sooner, and the products will surely expand overseas. China's nuclear medicine will surely lead the world's nuclear medicine forward.
