South Korea Ranks 5th Globally in Pharmaceutical Clinical Trial Market Share... Highest Ever, Up One Spot from Last Year

Last year, South Korea ranked 5th in the world for the number of clinical trial registrations conducted by pharmaceutical companies for drug development, marking its highest ranking ever.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety and the National Clinical Trial Support Foundation announced the "2022 Drug Clinical Trial Approval Status," which contains this information.

The number of clinical trial registrations in South Korea rose from 8th place in 2019 to 6th place in 2020 and 2021, and then climbed one more spot last year to set a new record. The United States and China took 1st and 2nd place respectively, followed by Spain and Germany.

Seoul ranked 1st in the global city clinical trial rankings. Multinational clinical trials involving two or more countries saw an increased share by European countries, causing South Korea to drop one spot from the previous year to 11th place.

Due to the global economic downturn last year, research and development (R&D) for new drug development contracted, resulting in a 27.7% decrease in pharmaceutical company-led clinical trials worldwide compared to the previous year, totaling 7,963 cases. The total number of clinical trial registrations worldwide was 8,196 in 2019 and had sharply increased to 11,008 in 2021.

The number of clinical trial approvals in South Korea also returned to a level similar to that of 2019, the year before COVID-19, with 711 cases last year. Among these, pharmaceutical company-led clinical trial approvals accounted for 595 cases, representing 83.7% of all clinical trial approvals. Investigator-initiated clinical trials, conducted for academic research purposes without external pharmaceutical company sponsorship, showed decreases in both approval numbers and proportion.

Additionally, clinical trials using drugs developed by overseas pharmaceutical companies decreased by 15.1% compared to the previous year, while those using drugs developed by domestic pharmaceutical companies decreased by 8.5%.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.