As China steps up efforts to adapt its healthcare system to support an aging population, Swiss drugmaker Roche is expanding its neuroscience footprint in the country.
The company is confident that advances in diagnosis and targeted therapies can reshape treatment for neurological disorders long considered among medicine's toughest challenges.
Historically, developing drugs for the brain has been notoriously difficult. The organ's complex mechanisms and protective blood-brain barrier block most medicines from entering. Data from IQVIA and the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development show that the clinical success rate for neurological drugs is only about 6 percent, while roughly 98 percent of small-molecule drugs fail to effectively cross the blood-brain barrier.
Yet, the urgency is growing. The World Health Organization has projected that neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, could become the world's second-leading cause of death by 2040, surpassing cancer-related deaths. In China alone, nearly 17 million people were living with Alzheimer's and related dementias in 2021, according to the China Alzheimer Report 2025. Separately, the China Parkinson Disease Report 2025 estimated that the country had more than 5 million Parkinson's patients in 2021, accounting for more than 43 percent of the worldwide patient population.
