Forget Nvidia chips, China's next big race is being slowed down by an unlikely rival: monkeys

China's pharmaceutical sector, which has spent the past five years rebuilding itself into the world's fastest drug development machine, is now being held back by a shortage of lab monkeys, and biotech executives say securing one now feels as difficult as negotiating with Nvidia for its chips.

In June 2026, a Chinese state laboratory paid 178,000 yuan, roughly Rs 22 lakh or $26,294, for each of 40 cynomolgus macaques, according to the Times of India. Twelve months earlier, the same animal cost approximately half that amount. Since 2018, when a single lab monkey cost around $1,800 (roughly Rs 1.5 lakh at current rates), prices have climbed by more than 1,000% in eight years.

Why are lab monkey prices in China rising so fast?


The bottleneck is not a collapse in supply. Regulated breeding farms are holding steady. What has changed is demand, and the scale of it.

China now accounts for roughly a third of the global innovative drug pipeline and is the top destination for clinical trials. Every one of those programmes requires primate safety data before it can proceed to human trials.

Jielun Zhu, co-founder and CFO at cancer therapy developer Excalipoint Therapeutics, compared the scramble to a large language model company chasing computing power. "It's like negotiating with Nvidia to secure its chips," he told the Times of India.

UBS Securities' China healthcare research head Chen Chen pointed specifically to biologics and newer drug formats such as antibody-drug conjugates, bispecifics, and in vivo CAR-T therapies, the exact categories where Chinese firms have been signing blockbuster licensing deals with Western pharmaceutical companies, the Times of India reported. A single programme can consume anywhere from a dozen to a hundred animals.

How is the monkey shortage delaying drug trials?

Harri Jarvelainen, a China-based consultant who advises Western clients on preclinical work, told the Times of India that study planning now takes an extra four months on average, and in worse cases as long as ten months.

That delay matters because speed to clinic has been the single biggest competitive advantage Chinese biotechs have held over their American rivals. Primates are used in preclinical toxicology studies to track how a drug moves through the body, what it does to organs, and whether it poses fatal risks. There is no regulatory substitute for this data and no workaround.

Which companies are benefiting from China's monkey shortage?

Large contract research organisations that had the foresight to build their own breeding operations are now sitting on significantly more valuable assets.

WuXi AppTec, Pharmaron, and Joinn Laboratories all run their own primate breeding programmes. Joinn Laboratories in July forecast a thirteen-fold jump in first-half net profit, largely because the monkeys on its books are now worth far more than they were a year ago, according to the Times of India.

Has China faced a lab monkey shortage before?

There is precedent for price spikes of this kind. During the Covid-19 pandemic, lab monkey prices rose from around $1,800 (roughly Rs 1.5 lakh) in 2018 to approximately $7,000 (around Rs 5.8 lakh) by 2020 as vaccine development programmes drove a sudden surge in demand.

The difference this time, Zhu, quoted by the Times of India, is structural. The current shortage is not a one-off emergency driven by a single global event but a consequence of China's sustained and rapid expansion across the entire drug development pipeline. Zhu projected that the price of a single animal could cross 200,000 yuan, approximately Rs 24.8 lakh, next year.

Why can't China simply breed more monkeys?

There is no quick fix on the supply side. Chinese regulations require monkeys used in toxicology testing to be at least three years old. A shortfall today cannot be bred away for another three years at minimum.

Zheshang Securities estimated in February that China will run short by 15,000 to 20,000 animals annually between 2026 and 2028. Imports from Cambodia, restarted this year after a pandemic-era freeze, are expected to fill part of the gap, but not all of it.

(With TOI inputs)