\n<\/p>\n
AstraZeneca must operate at \u201cChinese speed\u201d to ensure it does not suffer the fate of the western automotive industry by losing out to more innovative rivals, the drug company\u2019s boss has said.<\/p>\n
The FTSE 100 company is watching the rise of China\u2019s pharmaceutical industry closely and collaborating to take drugs to global markets, but its chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said the US and European pharmaceutical sectors must focus on increasing the speed of innovation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to make sure we don\u2019t fall behind,\u201d Soriot said. \u201cWhat we are learning ourselves is we have to move much faster. We always talk about Chinese speed in our company, and we want to operate in Chinese speed.\u201d<\/p>\n
AstraZeneca said on Monday it was confident of hitting its growth targets for 2030, when it expects to make $80bn (\u00a360bn) in annual sales, up from $59bn last year. The British company, headquartered in Cambridge, reported revenues of \u00a330.7bn in the first half of 2026, a 6% increase on the same period a year earlier at constant exchange rates.<\/p>\n
Soriot, the highest-paid FTSE 100 chief executive, said the pipeline of new drugs from the company was \u201cunmatched\u201d, putting it on course to hit the growth targets in 2030 and beyond despite the surprise failure of Wainua, one of its major heart disease drug prospects, in clinical trials earlier this month.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to accept to fail some of the time,\u201d Soriot said. \u201cBiology is biology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite confidence in growth prospects, French-born Soriot acknowledged that dominant pharmaceutical companies in Europe and the US needed to be aware of the potential challenge from Chinese competitors.<\/p>\n
He cited the automotive industry as an example, where western companies had predominantly focused on making cars with petrol engines, leaving the way clear for Chinese companies to dominate electric car sales.<\/p>\n
\u201cChinese companies were focused completely on electric vehicles and batteries and those kinds of technologies,\u201d Soriot said, adding that Chinese pharmaceutical companies were investing heavily in equivalent novel technologies such as antibody drug conjugates, which deliver chemotherapy agents directly to cancer cells, and cell therapy, in which live cells are injected into the body to help fight diseases.<\/p>\n
Sorit also played down the risk to jobs posed by AI, which he said could increase the speed of drug development, particularly in the design of trial protocols.<\/p>\n
He said he believed AI tools would help improve productivity in the pharma industry, allowing for economic growth rather than meaning fewer people would be needed.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotionFree newsletter | Every weekday<\/p>\n
Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cThis story about AI killing jobs is a bit of a fake story,\u201d Soriot said. \u201cI can tell you it makes me faster and smarter,\u201d he added, of his experience interacting with AI tools.<\/p>\n Soriot said that AstraZeneca would engage with the UK government under its new leader, Andy Burnham, to seek clarity on a deal with the US that could result in the NHS paying billions of pounds more for medicines.<\/p>\n He said it was too early to say whether the change in leadership would have any effect on the deal \u2013 struck under pressure from Donald Trump, who threatened to impose heavy tariffs on UK drug exports to the US \u2013 which analysis has suggested could lead to 229,000 excess deaths in England.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to understand their priorities and where the priorities are,\u201d Soriot said. \u201cYou have to establish your priorities and then fund them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AstraZeneca must operate at \u201cChinese speed\u201d to ensure it does not suffer the fate of the western automotive industry by losing out to more innovative rivals, the drug company\u2019s boss has said. The FTSE 100 company is watching the rise of China\u2019s pharmaceutical industry closely and collaborating to take drugs to global markets, but its<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[14937,1120,4261,6679,1294,2244,3213,1036],"class_list":{"0":"post-51457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-astrazeneca","9":"tag-boss","10":"tag-chinese","11":"tag-drugmakers","12":"tag-move","13":"tag-speed","14":"tag-urges","15":"tag-western"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}