China takes eight years longer on average to approve drugs than other major countries and U.S. drugmakers are looking at ways to help speed things up, Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY) Chief Executive Officer John Lechleiter said. “This is a drug lag that I hope we are able to close in the coming years, by working with Chinese authorities to speed up the process of doing clinical trials in China,” Lechleiter said in an interview in Beijing yesterday. The 59-year-old executive is spending the week in China to meet government officials and business executives as chairman of the industry group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Lilly itself plans to conduct simultaneous late-stage tests in China for products such as the experimental diabetes drug dulaglutide, according to Lechleiter. The Indianapolis-based drugmaker wants introduce more than a dozen medicines in China in the next five years, including drugs for diabetes and cancer, and seeks to keep sales there growing 25 percent as they did last year, he said in March.
