The globalization and blending of western and traditional medicine is a growing trend, prevalent in China but also on the rise in North America.

Benda Pharmaceutical is a China-based pharmaceutical company producing both Gendicine®, the world’s first commercialized gene therapy medicine for the treatment of cancer, and traditional Chinese and conventional medicines. The company recently launched a new investor video to provide investors insight into the Benda and Gendicine® investment opportunity.

The company video showcases key investment facts, including revenue growth from $15.9 million in 2006, to projected revenue of $56 million in 2008. Healthcare spending in China is anticipated to grow to $323 billion by 2025 and is a driving force in Benda’s projections. Recent announcements by the Chinese government to attempt to tighten control of costs for medical services and drugs heighten awareness to the growing issue.

The rapidly growing healthcare market in China, with an aging and more affluent population, will incite new entrants and new technologies. To be competitive, technologies and products will need to prove claims and meet regulatory standards. According to Benda’s video, the company’s cancer treatment technology is 340% more effective than traditional treatments.

Other public companies capitalizing on the China healthcare opportunity include Beijing Med-Pharm Corporation, a pharmaceutical marketing and distribution company that is building a proprietary portfolio of branded pharmaceutical and healthcare products in China.

Linkwell Corporation develops, manufactures, and distributes disinfectant healthcare products in China, estimated at $6.25 Billion, according to recent press from the company.

Other Biotech Companies competing for the cancer treatment market in China include BioSphere Medical, Inc., a medical device company that uses bioengineered microspheres to treat uterine fibroids, hypervascularized tumors, and vascular malformations by a minimally invasive, image-guided medical procedure called embolotherapy. The company announced the Medical Device Department of the State Food and Drug Administration of the People’s Republic of China has approved BioSphere’s Embosphere Microspheres for clinical use for vascular embolizations, arteriovenous malformations, hypervascularized tumors, and symptomatic uterine fibroids and expects to begin shipments of Embosphere Microspheres to China in the first quarter of 2008.

According to a Decision Resources report published in 2007, pharmaceutical and healthcare industry analysts predict that the Chinese hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC; the most prevalent type of primary liver cancer) market will quadruple between 2006 and 2011. Celsion Corporation recently announced that its application for a Special Protocol Assessment (SPA) for its Pivotal Phase III Primary Liver Cancer trial has been agreed to by the US Food and Drug Administration, to demonstrate the efficacy of Celsion’s proprietary chemotherapeutic, ThermoDox, in combination with radiofrequency ablation as a first line treatment of primary liver cancer. The study will incorporate about 40 clinical sites in North America, Italy, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea, and is planned to enroll 600 patients.