With the goal to become a top 3 pharma company in China, Novartis has been busy tapping into the expertise of local drugmakers.
In its latest collaboration, Novartis has signed a strategic agreement with Shanghai Pharma to help sell the Swiss company’s mature ophthalmic products in China, Shanghai Pharma said (Chinese) Monday.
Novartis will leverage Shanghai Pharma’s omni-channel integrated marketing services and broad market coverage capabilities to accelerate the reach of some Novartis drugs for ocular infections and glaucoma in smaller territories not currently targeted by Novartis, according to the Chinese company.
The two companies did not disclose the specific products covered by the deal. Ophthalmology is not a Novartis focus area. The company is now focused on four core therapeutic areas: cardiovascular-renal-metabolic, immunology, neuroscience and oncology.
The new partnership builds on a longstanding relationship between Novartis and Shanghai Pharma.
Also on Monday, the two firms unveiled (Chinese) the opening of a cardiovascular health management platform to offer patients continuous support before and after diagnosis. The platform includes a cloud-based service to offer medication guidance, test results tracking and follow-up visits.
The partners labeled the platform as a part of a “specialty pharmacy” that now covers treatments for skin disease, breast cancer, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
In November 2024, Novartis China signed on (Chinese) Shanghai Pharma and C.Q. Pharmaceutical to build a supply chain for its radioligand therapies. The deal came after Novartis in July broke ground on a 600 million Chinese yuan ($83 million) on a radioligand therapy manufacturing facility in the province of Zhejiang, near Shanghai. The company expects the facility to be operational by the end of 2026.
China has been one of Novartis’ priority geographies, alongside the U.S., Germany and Japan. In China, Novartis’ goal is to become a top-three multinational pharma company by sales, and CEO Vas Narasimhan recently said the company may achieve that goal this year. To contribute toward that goal, Novartis earlier this month won Chinese approvals for Kisqali as an adjuvant treatment for early-stage HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer and for Scemblix in newly diagnosed Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia.
In 2024, Novartis saw sales from China grow 21% at constant exchange rates year-over-year to $3.9 billion.
Novartis likely won’t be able to pull it off all by itself in China. Shanghai Pharma is one of the country’s largest pharma distributors and contract sales organizations (CSO). In 2024, Shanghai Pharma’s CSO business managed 65 drugs, contributing to 8 billion Chinese yuan ($1.1 billion) of those products’ annual revenue, up 177% year-over-year, according to the company’s annual report.
Alongside Novartis’ radioligand therapy pact, Shanghai Pharma in November inked (Chinese) a group of commercialization deals, including with Pfizer on vaccines and with Gilead Sciences on long-acting HIV therapy, among others.
Besides Shanghai Pharma, Novartis has also been working with China’s state-owned behemoth Sinopharma, which markets Novartis’ Gleevec (also known as Glivec) in the country since 2023. In January, the two signed (Chinese) a strategic collaboration to focus on oncology drugs in the future.