Biopharmaceutical Revolution in Saudi Arabia: Progress and Development

Current and future prospective of pharmaceutical manufacturing in Saudi Arabia

This observational descriptive study that was carried out with the objective of exploring the contribution of the local pharmaceutical industry to the Saudi drug security. Using a drug formulary provided from the Saudi Food and Drug Authority, containing all registered pharmaceutical products available in Saudi Arabia, we extracted information about drug class, drug type, country and place of manufacturing, shelf-life and price. Results showed that the majority of drugs in the market are manufactured in Europe (43.86%), followed by Saudi Arabia (22.55%), China and India (20.47%), Americas (10.24%), and other nations (2.61%). Most of the manufactured drugs were prescription drugs (90.62%). In this work, the local pharmaceutical industry with the highest percentage of contribution to local drug security was Pharmaceutical Solution Industries (PSI), representing the 5% of the items available in the Saudi market. The second highest percentage was 4% by TABUK Pharmaceutical Manufacturing CO., followed by SPIMACO (3%), JAMJOOM pharmaceutical company (2%), Riyadh pharma (2%), and Jazeera pharmaceutical industries (2%). In addition, results from this study provide information about the most essential pharmaceutical products that needs to be nationally manufactured or increased in production in order to rise the contribution of local pharmaceutical industries in Saudi drug security. Unfortunately, the small contribution of the Saudi pharmaceutical industry in local drug security increases the burden on the Kingdom's annual budget due to the over-reliance on international pharmaceuticals.

Current situation and future development of the biopharmaceutical industry in China: A mixed-method study

Introduction: The biomedical industry has grown significantly both globally and in China; however, there are still challenges. This study aimed at evaluating the biopharmaceutical sector of China, in terms of ability to innovate, current sales volume, investment, and R&D expenditure, as well as providing a case study detailing the progress and challenges of the industry in Shaanxi province.

Method: A cross-sectional mixed-method study design was used to generate a comprehensive profile of the nature of biopharmaceutical innovation capacity and development in China by triangulating country-wide survey and interview data from Shaanxi province. Only biopharmaceutical companies that are currently marketing or conducting research and development were eligible for inclusion, and Shaanxi province was selected for conducting the interviews. Categorical and continuous variables were analyzed descriptively. Interviews were thematically analyzed by using NVivo version 12.

Results: The analysis includes responses from 77 biopharmaceutical enterprises; the majority (36, 46.8%) are in Eastern China, followed by 26 (33.8%) in Central China. In 2018, the total sales of biological products amounted to 26.28 billion yuan, and in 2019, a slight increase was observed (30.34 billion); the amount doubled in 2020 to about 67.91 billion yuan. The top three biopharmaceutical products on sale in 2020 were Camrelizumab (5.14 billion yuan), human albumin (4.56 billion yuan), and human immunoglobulin for injection (3.78 billion yuan). Expenditure on R&D has also increased; it amounted to 1657.7 million yuan in 2018, which more than doubled in 2019 to 3572.1 million yuan and further increased to 5857.7 million yuan in 2020. Nonetheless, the progress is not uniform across all provinces, as shown from the results from Shaanxi province, because of lack of local government policies that will impact on the funding, incentives, and market share that motivate the producers.

Conclusion: China’s biopharmaceutical industry has expand significantly. The increase in sales indicates that there is an increase in demand for biologicals; moreover, R&D funding is increasing. These are key indicators that influence innovation and development. However, the sector’s capacity to innovate and develop needs to be improved, particularly in the western region, where research and production are relatively weak.

Progress on Pharmaceutical Sciences/Pharmacy Postgraduate Education: a Bibliometric Perspective

Objective

The study quantitatively investigated the related research progress in pharmaceutical sciences/pharmacy education from a bibliometric angle and provided feasible suggestions to facilitate the development of pharmaceutical sciences/pharmacy postgraduate education.

Methods

Bibliometric analysis was conducted using the database of Web of Science Core Collection. The literature published in 1985–2021 was screened and selected. The overall profile description, citation analysis, and research hotspot mining were performed using the citation report of Clarivate Analytics, bibliometrics online platform, and VOSviewer software. The bibliometric results and profiles were plotted and illustrated.

Results

The bibliometric analysis of 485 papers of interest showed that the research frontier was continuously expanding; especially the institutions from the USA were the main contributors. The numbers of citing papers have been ascending, and a considerable part of citations were from the areas other than the education research. Mining results showed that the in-school and residency education of pharmacy postgraduates was a research hotspot, as well as interprofessional training and new education styles for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) therapy were the emerging trends in the field.

Conclusion

Through the analysis of the studies, it was found that encouraging relevant research programs, establishing financial supports, and launching specified publication sources could be helpful to boost the development of pharmaceutical sciences/pharmacy postgraduate education. Besides, the results suggested that this was a less discussed topic and was worthy for the investigators to pay more attention to such an issue.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12247-021-09611-z.

Localizing pharmaceuticals manufacturing and its impact on drug security in Saudi Arabia

Local production of pharmaceuticals plays a vital role in maintaining resilience of national healthcare systems, especially when it comes to facilitating access to needed medicines and decreasing exposure to imports and international supply chains. Pharma is a research-intensive industry and the systemic lack of governance and support to R&D activities in this sector, among other host of related issues such as unsupportive regulatory regimes and human resources capacity limitations, is one of the major impediments to the diversifying of locally produced pharmaceuticals portfolio. In this review, an overview of the current pharmaceutical production system in Saudi Arabia, its major challenges, and proposed remedies to address them will be highlighted.