Lab monkey prices at record highs as China’s biotech boom fuels windfall for breeders
In the first six months to June 30, there were 81 cross-border deals for innovative medicines worth a combined record of US$110 billion
Soaring demand for preclinical testing in China’s biotech industry has created an unexpected windfall for the laboratories that breed monkeys used in drug trials.
Beijing-based Joinn Laboratories, a contract research organisation (CRO) dual listed in Shanghai and Hong Kong, said on Wednesday that its first-half net profit attributable to shareholders would surge 1377.4 per cent from a year earlier, without giving the profit estimate figure.
The biotech CRO cited higher pricing for its laboratory animals as the core growth driver, with analysts singling out lab monkeys.
“Costs of lab primates – most notably crab-eating macaques – started trending upwards from the middle of last year,” Yu Ruyi, an analyst at Kaiyuan Securities pointed out in a March research report. Survey data compiled by the analyst showed that each crab-eating macaque fetched 90,000 yuan (US$13,301) in the middle of last year.
But this June, prices per macaque have surged to 178,000 yuan, according to tender results released by the National Institute for Food and Drug Control.
He Zhengming, deputy secretary general of the Chinese Society of Laboratory Animals, said that some primate breeding farms were now quoting crab-eating macaques at around 200,000 yuan each, higher than the 194,000 yuan peak four years ago during the pandemic.