Front Row with BioCentury: Asia innovation and dealmaking beyond China

Asia’s biopharma landscape is entering a new phase of evolution, with South Korea and Japan emerging as increasingly important centers of innovation alongside China’s established momentum. In this episode of Front Row with BioCentury, Head of Corporate Alliances and Business Development Josh Berlin examines how these markets are building distinct, globally competitive ecosystems shaped by infrastructure, policy, and strategic focus.

In this conversation, Berlin highlights South Korea’s rise as a hub for platform technologies and first-in-class innovation, driven by a global-first mindset, strong academic research, leading clinical trial infrastructure, and world-class manufacturing capabilities. He contrasts this with Japan’s reawakening biotech sector, where long-standing strengths in pharma and academic science are now being activated through targeted government initiatives like the AMED double-matching program, attracting both domestic and Western venture capital into early-stage company creation...