China Lab Monkey Prices Soar to 180,000 Yuan as Drug Research Demand Surges

Laboratory monkey prices in China have surged to as much as 180,000 yuan (US$27,000) per animal, returning to pandemic-era highs as a boom in new drug research and development strains limited supply. The cost exceeds the average annual wage in the country, and many suppliers report their colonies are fully pre-booked, forcing some researchers to put critical studies on hold.

Suppliers are now generally quoting about 180,000 yuan per animal. A scientist at Jinan University's Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Non-Human Primate Research said, "It is not just a question of price. In many cases, the monkeys simply cannot be bought. Suppliers say they have all been pre-booked." The laboratory requires between 30 and 50 monkeys each year for scientific work.

A public tender released in early February by the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica set a budget of 62 million yuan for 450 cynomolgus macaques, working out to about 137,800 yuan per animal. The price is slightly below the 170,000 yuan that the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control paid for monkeys in its first batch purchase in 2023, when supply was tight due to a scramble for primates for Covid-19 vaccine and drug trials. It still marks a surge from 2021, when the national medical authority spent 70,500 yuan per monkey.

The head of healthcare research for Asia at US investment bank Jefferies said US rate cuts have boosted biotech funding, so more projects are moving into early stages and need safety assessment – and that means more monkeys. The head of L.E.K. Consulting’s China biopharmaceuticals and life sciences practice added that the ramp-up in clinical trials in China, coupled with Chinese companies preparing and conducting trials overseas, is leading to more investigational new drug (IND) applications and therefore more IND-enabling toxicology studies that rely on primates.

Brokerage estimates suggest the market will remain tight. Founder Securities said it expected the annual domestic supply of experimental monkeys to range between 49,000 and 52,400 animals from 2025 to 2027, compared with a likely demand of 51,300 to 62,600 animals a year. On the supply side, it is difficult to expand capacity in the short term, and some monkey farms say their production has already been fully booked through the first quarter of 2026. The supply-demand imbalance is therefore expected to persist, and prices are likely to rise further in the near term.

Chinese contract research organisations have taken steps to hedge against volatility. WuXi AppTec acquired Guangdong Chunsheng, a monkey farm, in 2020, giving it access to more than 20,000 cynomolgus macaques by 2021. A subsidiary of Joinn Laboratories bought about 1,400 acres in Florida in mid-2022 for US$5.5 million, with plans to build a primate quarantine facility. WuXi AppTec currently has 30,000 monkeys, Joinn Laboratories has 25,000 monkeys and Triapex Laboratories has 20,000 monkeys.

Analysts said the current price spike is unlikely to affect drug costs for patients. The most costly part during drug research and development is the clinical trial from phase one to phase three, which takes about five to 10 years and consumes millions of dollars. A safety assessment price hike is a small part of the total cost. About 70 per cent of drug-development costs are associated with late stage trials, so animal models will not affect the overall cost. The average annual wage of employees in above-scale enterprises was 102,452 yuan in 2024, highlighting how a single monkey now exceeds that income.