Nancy T. CHANGChairman & Sr. Managing Director, Asia, OrbiMed Advisors

The rise of Asia and the rapid growth of the global life sciences industry will be two of the defining economic trends of the coming decades. Asia’s attractive life sciences investment opportunities derive from the region’s booming domestic markets for healthcare products and services, tremendous cost advantages, and rapidly improving science and research capabilities, etc.

The traditional Western drug development paradigm has become too expensive and unproductive: R&D budgets continue to expand while the rate of new product introductions has been flat or even declining by some measures. Fortunately, the need to create a more cost-efficient drug development process is being recognized and a new paradigm, which integrates the most cost-efficient drug development resources worldwide, is evolving.

Concurrently, demand for healthcare products and services are growing explosively in Asia’s emerging middle class. In addition, many government leaders in Asia countries now recognize the strategic and economic value of the healthcare/biotech industry. They are creating incentives to encourage and stimulate R&D investments in the sector. As a result, we are beginning to see early signs of R&D innovation which was previously driving predominantly in Western markets.

Dr. Nancy Chang is currently Chairman and Sr. Managing Director of OrbiMed’s Caduceus Asia Partner (CAP) Fund. OrbiMed Advisors is the largest investment firm in the world focused solely on the healthcare sector. CAP is a Pan Asia fund formed in 2008 with investment focus in Asian countries including China, India, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, etc, to capture the diverse investment opportunities created at the intersection of these trends. CAP’s investment thesis will connects Asia’s cost-efficient drug development and manufacturing advantages and rapidly growing consumer populations with Western innovation and capital markets.