"Europe's Access Dilemma" (2/5) - Europe Can't Pay More For Innovation: The Case For Co-developing With Asia

Épisode de Pharma Minds par Nathalie Lahitte · 14 septembre 2026 · 31 min

What if Europe’s answer to the rising cost of pharmaceutical innovation wasn’t simply to pay more, but to develop differently?

In this episode of Pharma minds, I speak with Franck Le Deu, one of the few European voices with decades of first-hand experience inside Asia’s rapidly evolving biopharma ecosystem.

Franck spent 20 years in China as a Senior Partner at McKinsey, advising some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies as China transformed from a market for Western medicines into a global source of biopharma innovation. Today, he is working on building bridges between Western innovation and Asian capabilities. That transformation is at the heart of our conversation.

Because Europe faces an uncomfortable equation.

The pharmaceutical industry has become increasingly US-centric. The majority of its profits are generated in the US, investment has followed, and Europe has progressively lost influence. At the same time, European governments face growing fiscal constraints, making simply spending more on innovative medicines increasingly difficult.

Franck makes the case for another path: co-development with Asia.

We explore:

◾️ How China became one of the world’s leading biopharma innovation ecosystems

◾️ Why US pharma is moving faster than Europe to tap into Chinese biotech innovation

◾️ How Asia could help reduce the cost and accelerate the execution of clinical trials and drug development

◾️ Why Europe can no longer afford to look at China only as a competitive threat

◾️ What Europe–Asia co-development could look like in practice

◾️ How Europe could combine Asian capabilities with its own strengths in research, development and manufacturing

◾️ And whether this model could help Europe regain pharmaceutical competitiveness while protecting its sovereignty

Franck’s argument is not that Europe should replace its relationship with the US with China. It is that Europe needs to engage with Asia strategically, learn from ecosystems that move faster, and build new forms of collaboration that preserve European strengths and sovereignty.

Ultimately, making pharmaceutical innovation accessible to more patients will require more than higher budgets. It means bringing R&D and manufacturing costs down, rethinking pricing, and creating ecosystems that know how to collaborate and compete.

This is episode #2 of Europe’s Access Dilemma: five perspectives on how Europe can make innovation affordable.

Franck Le Deu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franck-le-deu/

Resources mentioned in the episode:

📌 PhRMA Forum 2026 - “China’s Leading Edge: What’s at Risk” : https://www.innovation.org/phrma-forum/

📌 “Europe’s narrow path between the U.S. and China in biotech”, an article from Franck Le Deu, BioCentury : https://www.biocentury.com/article/659819/

Further reading from Franck Le Deu:

📌 “In support of a multipolar biopharma world: Guest Commentary", BioCentury : https://www.biocentury.com/article/658573

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