Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Brian Wallach is forty five years old, a husband and
Speaker 2: a father of two. For much of his life, he
Speaker 2: worked as a lawyer and political organizer, even serving as
Speaker 2: White House counsel under President Barack Obama. But eight years
Speaker 2: ago he received a devastating diagnosis.
Speaker 3: I was diagnosed with ALS in twenty seventeen at the
Speaker 3: age of thirty seven.
Speaker 4: My wife, Sandra, and I.
Speaker 3: Had just brought our second daughter home when we received
Speaker 3: the news.
Speaker 2: ALS, known widely as lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative
Speaker 2: disorder where motor neurons are gradually lost, leading patients to
Speaker 2: slowly lose control of their bodies.
Speaker 3: For me, this has meant a gradual loss of my
Speaker 3: ability to walk, use my hands, and speak.
Speaker 2: At the time, Brian was given six months to live.
Speaker 4: I couldn't accept that timeline.
Speaker 3: Instead, I chose to fight with everything I had to
Speaker 3: change it.
Speaker 4: Eight years later, I'm still here.
Speaker 2: Today. Brian and his wife Sandra are advocates for the
Speaker 2: more than thirty thousand Americans living with ALS. They founded
Speaker 2: the nonprofit I Am ALS in part to advocate for
Speaker 2: research funding for cure, and some of the most exciting
Speaker 2: als research to date is coming out of China.
Speaker 1: China is trying to have the companies do something that
Speaker 1: nobody in the world has ever done. That is China's goal,
Speaker 1: like to be a global bow tech leader.
Speaker 2: That's Bloomberg's Asia Health reporter Carolyn Khan Jesus. China is
Speaker 2: taking a controversial approach to finding cures to diseases like als.
Speaker 1: China sees gene editing in animals as one of the
Speaker 1: key aspects of bow tech development.
Speaker 2: Gene editing. The US and Europe take a strict approach
Speaker 2: to gene editing animals, in particular large animals like pigs, monkeys,
Speaker 2: and dogs, but as China's biotech industry grows, its use
Speaker 2: of gene edited large animals has expanded.
Speaker 1: So for years, this professor that Eachang at Siwa University
Speaker 1: was studying to find a solution to als, and his
Speaker 1: lab was making als animal models. First, they were putting
Speaker 1: the disease into mice, but mice didn't show any symptoms.
Speaker 1: It never worked down mice, but then he gene edited
Speaker 1: a pig. The pig developed symptoms of ALS and then
Speaker 1: died about a year later. This was significant because Professor
Speaker 1: that Eichan was able to replicate a human disease into
Speaker 1: a big animal, which allows drug developers and scientists to
Speaker 1: test the full side effects.
Speaker 2: By comparing the pig's reaction to that of mice models,
Speaker 2: John discovered a clue a gene acting uniquely in the
Speaker 2: mice that led to the development of a new drug
Speaker 2: he says could help ninety percent of als patients. The
Speaker 2: US Food and Drug Administration has approved the therapy, named
Speaker 2: snuggo I, for human trials this year. China is betting
Speaker 2: that drugs like these could help its biotech industry move
Speaker 2: from creating mostly generic drugs to the far more lucrative
Speaker 2: business of making patented medications. But the practice of using
Speaker 2: large gene edited animals in the drug development process is
Speaker 2: raising ethical questions. Carolyn says Professor Jah himself was conflicted.
Speaker 1: He was definitely happy because for all the years work,
Speaker 1: you see something that's becoming successful. But he also mentioned
Speaker 1: he was sorry film the creature to develop that. But
Speaker 1: again back to this argument, like what is right, what
Speaker 1: is wrong? How much can you do this? Where should
Speaker 1: we draw the line right?
Speaker 2: This is the big take. Asia from Bloomberg news I'm Wanha.
Speaker 2: Every week we take you inside some of the world's
Speaker 2: biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons, and
Speaker 2: businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today on the show,
Speaker 2: we find out how far China has come and how
Speaker 2: far it's willing to go to become the world's biotechnology superpower,
Speaker 2: and whether it could really challenge the West. China has
Speaker 2: big ambitions in the biotechnology industry. Over the past ten years,
Speaker 2: it's ramped up spending and drug development, and it's made
Speaker 2: changes to much of its regulatory regime to mirror Europe.
Speaker 2: In the US, China's biotech firms have gotten lots of
Speaker 2: financial help from the government and the explicit support of
Speaker 2: Chinese present Shijinping. In twenty sixteen, she said the country
Speaker 2: should become a global scientific and technology power, and he
Speaker 2: declared biotech and gene editing as strategic priority.
Speaker 1: Cdmps do yet.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Carolyn Kahn says until recently, China's biotech industry was
Speaker 2: known for making generic drugs. Today, though it's focused on
Speaker 2: innovation and creating new proprietary medications.
Speaker 1: Because generic drugs, just to putay simple, it doesn't make money.
Speaker 2: China used to be a distant third to the US
Speaker 2: and Europe when it came to creating new drugs, but
Speaker 2: last year it came up with more than twelve hundred
Speaker 2: new formulations, meeting out Europe and closing in on the US.
Speaker 2: In twenty fifteen, China was home to just five of
Speaker 2: the world's top fifty innovative drug companies.
Speaker 1: Today, twenty of the fifty companies that are generating the
Speaker 1: highest number of innovative drugs and now from China.
Speaker 2: China's move to dominate global biotech was formally revealed in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen in the country's five year Plan. The plan
Speaker 2: opened the door for China to begin using what has
Speaker 2: become one of the most effective tools, biobreeding, or genetic editing.
Speaker 2: Andy Greenfield is a geneticist and reproductive biologist at the
Speaker 2: University of Oxford. Scientists have been working on this technology
Speaker 2: since the nineteen seventies, but Andy says they've only recently
Speaker 2: learned how to actually edit an animal's genetic code.
Speaker 5: The most common way to do that these days would
Speaker 5: be to use Crispacas nine, which is a gene editing
Speaker 5: tool that we've had now for over ten years.
Speaker 2: Andy says gene editing an animal is complicated enough, but
Speaker 2: using that animal to cure a disease is more complicated.
Speaker 2: Still is not always clear which genes need to be
Speaker 2: targeted to replicate the disease. Figuring that out is expensive
Speaker 2: and time consuming.
Speaker 5: So for example, DNA, it might be you want to
Speaker 5: specifically model what happens when you change one aminum acid
Speaker 5: in a sheep or a goat or a mouse, and
Speaker 5: that could be chicky because it means that other things
Speaker 5: could happen in the process of trying to edit that gene,
Speaker 5: which are undesirable and unwanted.
Speaker 2: When gene editing technology first started being used, scientists worked
Speaker 2: almost exclusively on gene editing in mice, but over time
Speaker 2: they began editing the genomes of larger animals. Andy says
Speaker 2: large animal models are most helpful to scientists when rodents
Speaker 2: aren't big enough or won't live long enough to be
Speaker 2: able to mimic a disease.
Speaker 5: When it comes to neurological disorders, to model human neurological
Speaker 5: disorder once requires having a brain which is at least
Speaker 5: comparable to the human brain, perhaps which develops a condition
Speaker 5: over time which isn't always possible when a road model
Speaker 5: where the average mouse only lists for six months.
Speaker 2: Drugs that treat neurological diseases are prized in the drug
Speaker 2: development world because they're so difficult to make. China has
Speaker 2: several under development, including snug O one.
Speaker 1: There are definitely a lot of innovative drug in the pipelines,
Speaker 1: but the drug development takes, if not decase, at least
Speaker 1: it is and in that process you constantly need money
Speaker 1: to pull into the pipeline.
Speaker 2: To support making these drugs and its broader biotech ambitions.
Speaker 2: China has built eight animal research centers since twenty ten,
Speaker 2: and it keeps tens of thousands of animals in these facilities.
Speaker 2: Scientists can apply to them to get a certain type
Speaker 2: of monkey or a certain type of pig for their research.
Speaker 1: So the centers, you go to their website, they proudly
Speaker 1: exhibit what they have this animal, this monkey, whatever gene
Speaker 1: is altered with whatever foundation. There are also the biotech
Speaker 1: companies now trying to gene added the dogs.
Speaker 2: As if gene editing wasn't controversial enough, China is also
Speaker 2: pushing into an even more sensitive area of biological research, cloning.
Speaker 1: Actually, China clone the world's first dog with a certain
Speaker 1: gene edited disease, and also it cloned the world's first
Speaker 1: monkey with a certain gen edited disease.
Speaker 2: Chinese scientists first edited the genes of monkeys that had
Speaker 2: sleep disorders, anxiety, and depression. They then clone the animals
Speaker 2: to create a larger pool of patients with the same ailments,
Speaker 2: all with the idea of accelerating drug development.
Speaker 1: In the top universities of the research institutes, there are
Speaker 1: scientists doing monkeys, for example, to develop them into having autism.
Speaker 2: And Carolyn says the companies involved in gene editing and
Speaker 2: cloning don't just run experiments on the animals, they also
Speaker 2: sell them. Last year, the global market for genetically modified
Speaker 2: animals in biomedical research was estimated at fifteen billion dollars,
Speaker 2: more than twice what it was less than a decade ago,
Speaker 2: and China has become one of the biggest suppliers of
Speaker 2: lab animals in the world.
Speaker 1: It has probably the world's biggest population of monkeys that
Speaker 1: is commonly used in developing drugs and vaccines.
Speaker 2: Editing the genes of larger animals like monkeys or the
Speaker 2: pig that Jaii Chang used to treat als is still
Speaker 2: controversial in the West.
Speaker 1: We reach out to the Chinese government for commons. We
Speaker 1: sent a request three times, but we didn't get any
Speaker 1: answer from them. We ask how to regulate the industry,
Speaker 1: especially when there's so much demand on, you know, this
Speaker 1: kind of research, but the animal welfare law is not
Speaker 1: there yet in place.
Speaker 2: While the US does allow the use of large animal models,
Speaker 2: the majority of the twenty million lab animals used in
Speaker 2: the States are mice. Animal welfare is a major factor,
Speaker 2: and while Carolyn says it's also a concern for Chinese scientists,
Speaker 2: it tends to be weighed differently.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of scientists believe that what China
Speaker 1: is doing now, even the kind of work that is
Speaker 1: limited to the lapse to the university, to the research institutes,
Speaker 1: while in the future, contribute to China's advancement in the
Speaker 1: ribberry with the US, with Europe, because China is doing
Speaker 1: something that is very hard to be down right now.
Speaker 1: In the West.
Speaker 2: Coming up, we look at how reliable animal experiments are
Speaker 2: for developing therapies, the alternatives, and what the future could hold.
Speaker 2: Gene editing is a big, fast growing business in the
Speaker 2: agricultural sector. Scientists have found ways to develop cows without
Speaker 2: horns and salmon that grow faster to adulthood. Gene editing
Speaker 2: is also growing more popular in the area of science
Speaker 2: and drug research too, although exact numbers are hard to
Speaker 2: pin down, but Bloomberg's Carolyn Kahn says one thing is apparent.
Speaker 2: Genetically engineered animals are increasingly in demand.
Speaker 1: It is an increasingly important strategy to have good animals,
Speaker 1: larger animals, animals that can better mimic human disease.
Speaker 2: And if you want to work on these kinds of animals,
Speaker 2: China is the place to go. Carolyn says that's because
Speaker 2: there's not much oversight in the country's labs, and the
Speaker 2: main focus is on disease control, not animal welfare.
Speaker 1: If we're talking about how the animals are treated, I
Speaker 1: think nobody knows. It's like behind the door, behind the gate.
Speaker 1: They need to have the environment that is joy and
Speaker 1: clean and keep them way from bacterial or bogs. So
Speaker 1: that's a basic standard.
Speaker 2: Carolyn says. The only real rule China has is not
Speaker 2: to mistreat the animals.
Speaker 1: There's actually just one sentence in the regulation which says
Speaker 1: people who are dealing with the animals in the lab
Speaker 1: should not pease or mistreat them. So that's it about
Speaker 1: animal suffering. Animal rights or animal welfare is still something
Speaker 1: that is considered to be Western ideology.
Speaker 2: There isn't a unified animal rights charter, but there are
Speaker 2: principles developed in the nineteen fifties that most scientists follow of.
Speaker 5: Three hours which apply to the use of animals in research.
Speaker 5: So the three hours reduce, replace, and refine. So we're
Speaker 5: meant to be reducing the number of animals that we
Speaker 5: use in research ultimately with a view to replacing the
Speaker 5: use of animals in research by other methods. And when
Speaker 5: we do have to experiment on animals, we have to
Speaker 5: ensure we continually refine our experientation so that it causes
Speaker 5: the least a suffering to the animal. Now, when we
Speaker 5: say can we replace the use of animals, that would
Speaker 5: mean that there's an alternative, for example, an alternative methodology
Speaker 5: or alternative experiment that would still yield the same scientific information.
Speaker 2: And while China is doubling down on using animals more
Speaker 2: for research, in the West, governments are trying to push
Speaker 2: scientists in the opposite direction. In April, the FDA released
Speaker 2: a roadmap to reduce animal testing by pointing to alternatives
Speaker 2: like lab drawn human organs and artificial intelligence models, and
Speaker 2: the National Institute of Health points out that the use
Speaker 2: of animals to model human diseases like Alzheimer's and cancer
Speaker 2: has had only inconclusive results.
Speaker 5: So, for example, today it might be possible to use
Speaker 5: human organoids, little mini organs that can be grown in
Speaker 5: a dish using stem cells, So it's possible to use
Speaker 5: many kidneys and mini brains, etc. And that may be
Speaker 5: an alternative, always be an alternative, but it may be
Speaker 5: an alternative to using an animal.
Speaker 2: Andy Greenfield says, despite advances like the als drug developed
Speaker 2: from a pig in China, it's still not clear how
Speaker 2: useful gene edited animals are when it comes to finding
Speaker 2: cures for disease.
Speaker 5: You might expect there to be more progressing those countries
Speaker 5: which permit those kind of diseases, but nothing is necessarily
Speaker 5: the case, because some of those models that they generate
Speaker 5: may end up being dead ends, they may end up
Speaker 5: not being particularly good models, so it is known. I
Speaker 5: don't think there's any necessity here, but I suspect perhaps
Speaker 5: the probability goes up that they will at some point
Speaker 5: find a model which is very very useful for understanding
Speaker 5: the human condition. Research is just unpredictable. It doesn't go
Speaker 5: in a simple linear fashion.
Speaker 2: A review article by JOHNS Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Speaker 2: Health found that fewer than ten percent of animal experiments
Speaker 2: resulted in therapies used by patients. Meanwhile, public sentiment in
Speaker 2: the world west is turning against animal testing. In the
Speaker 2: US and Europe, activists have shut down labs and forced
Speaker 2: airlines to halt shipments of primates. They've also staged protests
Speaker 2: outside dog breeding facilities that lasted years.
Speaker 5: I think it's important in any country policy makers have
Speaker 5: an understanding of popular attitudes. Though the attitudes that the
Speaker 5: public will have I'm sure will be complex. It will
Speaker 5: be well, yes, but only with the following conditions. In
Speaker 5: the UK, for example, we are allegedly at a nation
Speaker 5: of animal lovers, so we claim, but it depends on
Speaker 5: the context. If I look out my window, I will
Speaker 5: see people walking their dogs every day, so there is
Speaker 5: that sense of love of animals in this country. But
Speaker 5: we still eat factory farm chickens in this country, where
Speaker 5: there's been untold descriptions of potential harms to those chickens
Speaker 5: during their relatively short lives.
Speaker 2: Carolin says, in China, the public sees animal testing in
Speaker 2: a positive light in large parts thanks to the state
Speaker 2: media in China.
Speaker 1: I think, especially state media, when they report on those topics,
Speaker 1: it's always like a celebration. It feels like this is
Speaker 1: a technology advancement. Right, China is catching up or even
Speaker 1: bit better in this field, So it's always like people
Speaker 1: celebrating this great thing. Rarely anyone doubts or even read
Speaker 1: the question of the ethical issues of animal testing gene modification,
Speaker 1: especially large animal.
Speaker 2: But China has come across a red line. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: one scientist had Jankoi carried out experiments on human embryos
Speaker 2: to give them protection against HIV.
Speaker 1: So that was a scandal that he can shake not
Speaker 1: only China but global scientific community.
Speaker 2: He was jailed for three years and the government cracked down. Now,
Speaker 2: experimentation on humans is strictly regulated, but when it comes
Speaker 2: to animals, pretty much anything goes. Professor John the man
Speaker 2: who developed the als therapy from a gene edited pig,
Speaker 2: told Carolyn that he has no qualms about using animals
Speaker 2: to find cures for humans.
Speaker 1: He feels so happy that China stew Is in the
Speaker 1: direction like to support animal research because he believed animal
Speaker 1: models is not going to be replaced in the near future.
Speaker 2: Carolyn says, the way Chinese scientists see it, animal testing
Speaker 2: is a necessary part of the process, a way to
Speaker 2: potentially prevent humans from suffering.
Speaker 1: For human patients, there are so many patients quietly dying
Speaker 1: and no solutions, especially those rare disease. There's no investment
Speaker 1: because not so many people need the drugs right, So
Speaker 1: that's the rare disease patients. They are really struggling to
Speaker 1: get in enough attention to get enough for help, and
Speaker 1: they are really frustrated. They are in a kind of
Speaker 1: sitution that those scientists think maybe we should have more
Speaker 1: femassy too than a mouse.
Speaker 2: This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wanha.
Speaker 2: To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
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