Cytiva’s Chris Riley: Turning “China speed” into Sustained Momentum

By Binya Hu, SFC 21st Century Business Herald

At the ninth Hongqiao International Economic Forum, the parallel session “Pudong and the World: Technological Innovation Driving Industrial Upgrading, Smart Integration Shaping a Shared Future” brought together global business leaders to explore how innovation can drive industrial transformation.

Chris Riley, CEO of Cytiva, highlighted China’s growing role in biopharmaceutical innovation, emphasizing the importance of connecting scientific discovery with development, manufacturing and patient impact.

Riley noted that across the global biopharmaceutical industry, scientific advances are making medicine increasingly precise. Today, approximately one in five newly approved medicines is a targeted or personalized therapy. Yet scientific discovery is only the beginning: breakthroughs must be validated, proven safe and effective, and manufactured consistently before they can reach patients at scale.

Turning to China’s role in the industry, Riley emphasized that the country is playing an increasingly important part in global biopharmaceutical innovation. China accounts for nearly 30% of the global pipeline of innovative drugs under development and 24% of the global first-in-class drug pipeline. In 2025, the National Medical Products Administration approved a record 76 innovative drugs.

What is often described outside China as “China speed,” he said, matters not simply for how quickly discoveries are made, but for the momentum that carries them forward.

To illustrate the importance of collaboration, Riley shared the story of KJ Muldoon, a child born with a rare metabolic disorder known as CPS1 deficiency. Scientists, clinicians, industry partners, including Danaher, and regulators worked together to develop a personalized CRISPR-based gene-editing therapy in less than six months — a process that could otherwise take three to five years under normal circumstances. The case, he said, demonstrates how connecting science, development, manufacturing and regulatory expertise can help turn breakthroughs into treatments when time is critical.

Looking ahead, Riley identified one of the defining challenges for the next decade: moving from “N=1” to “N=many” — making therapies developed for individual patients reproducible and scalable. As genetic sequencing becomes dramatically less expensive and scientists gain deeper insights into disease mechanisms, manufacturing considerations must be brought into the development process much earlier. A promising candidate or computational prediction alone is not enough; scientific evidence must ultimately translate into reliable treatments that can reach more patients.

On the role of artificial intelligence, Riley pointed out that AI could accelerate this process. Danaher is using autonomous laboratories to combine AI and automation in a continuous design-make-test-and-learn cycle, accelerating discovery processes up to eightfold. Through its collaboration with NVIDIA, the company is also exploring how AI and accelerated computing can connect digital intelligence with laboratory instruments and experimental systems. As Riley put it, AI can help scientists identify where to look, but experiments must establish what is true.

Riley also stressed that turning innovation into patient impact requires a broader ecosystem built through sustained collaboration and investment. Cytiva has spent 20 years developing biopharmaceutical capabilities in Zhangjiang, Shanghai, through its FAST Trak center. The center has trained nearly 40,000 professionals in the biomedical field and helped advance 32 innovative molecules to successful Investigational New Drug (IND) filings across 10 countries. It is now part of Pudong’s Large Enterprise Open Innovation Center initiative, connecting global capabilities with local innovators.

Looking at the future of China’s role in global innovation, Riley said the opportunity for cooperation increasingly runs in both directions: bringing global scientific and manufacturing expertise closer to innovation in China, while helping innovations developed locally reach researchers, institutions and patients around the world. He expressed confidence that China, and Pudong in particular, will play a defining role in moving from individual breakthroughs to innovation at scale — turning “China speed” into sustained momentum and better outcomes for patients.

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