The price of lab monkeys in China surged to a five-year high, delaying some drug trials, as the country’s biotech boom runs into resource constraints.
The primates are raised for at least four years before being used in trials, and breeders did not increase their populations during an investment downturn in 2023. But Chinese companies inked a record number of licensing deals with foreign drugmakers in 2025 — worth more than $123 billion — accelerating research, meaning “monkey supplies are limited” a UBS analyst told the Financial Times.
Global investors are now more trusting of data from Chinese clinical trials, Reuters wrote, but geopolitics could come in the way: US lawmakers recently passed new rules targeting Chinese biotech firms.