China’s biotech boom sends price of lab monkeys for drug tests climbing

A surge in drug research in China has driven the cost of a laboratory monkey to about 140,000 yuan (US$20,260), a sum that exceeds the country’s average annual wage.Official government procurement records showed that prices had doubled in the last five years for such monkeys, which are widely used in the preclinical stage to check whether a drug is safe and how it is absorbed, broken down and cleared by the body.Analysts said the soaring cost was underpinned by a flood of drug-licensing deals between Chinese biotech firms and global pharmaceutical giants, alongside a revival in pharmaceutical fundraising activities, which had pushed a record number of candidate drugs into early-stage testing.A public tender released in early February by the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica revealed a budget of 62 million yuan for 450 cynomolgus macaques, working out to about 137,800 yuan per animal.The price is slightly below the 170,000 yuan that the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control paid for monkeys in its first batch purchase in 2023, when supply was tight owing to a scramble for primates to conduct Covid-19 vaccine and drug trials. But the price still marks a surge from 2021, when the national medical authority spent 70,500 yuan per monkey.The cost of a laboratory monkey in China has risen to about 140,000 yuan. Photo: Shutterstock“US rate cuts have boosted biotech funding, so more projects are moving into early stages and need safety assessment – and that means more monkeys,” said Cui Cui, head of healthcare research for Asia at US investment bank Jefferies.