Foreign firms including Merck KGaA, Boehringer Ingelheim, Takeda and Sanofi’s vaccines business are being led by women in India, a fiercely competitive, largely out-of-pocket market. There’s a lot riding on these female leaders as they seek to drive business growth and potentially change the paradigm around the gender gap in pharma at the top.

A roundup of key regulatory and policy developments in the Asia-Pacific in the first half of the year reveals broad developments across the region's diverse markets, although there seemed to be a common thread - a renewed focus on infectious diseases amid the lingering impact of the pandemic and the emergence of new threats.

Senior management executives of Roche, Bayer, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Novo Nordisk in India signal momentum in product launch and clinical trial activity, belying apprehension of wider cutbacks by foreign firms in the country, though one executive stressed that “tried and tested models” may not work in the largely self-pay market.