Innovent in line for $10.5bn in Pfizer cancer alliance
Pfizer has signed a strategic-level R&D alliance with Innovent Biologics, worth $10.5 billion and spanning a dozen programmes in oncology, in another sign of China's emergence as a life sciences R&D powerhouse.
Suzhou-based Innovent is getting a $650 million upfront payment in the deal, with another $9.85 billion in potential development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments tied to the progress of the 12 antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) and multi-specific antibody candidates, eight discovered by Innovent and four others proposed by Pfizer.
The collaboration comes just a few weeks after Bristol Myers Squibb forged a similar partnership with China's Hengrui Pharma, worth up to $15.2 billion and incorporating 13 programmes in oncology, haematology, and immunology. That, in turn, followed a $8.5 billion tie-up between Eli Lilly and Innovent, a $12 billion alliance between Hengrui and GSK and a $5 billion-plus deal signed by AstraZeneca and Argo Biopharma last year.
China now accounts for around a third of all biopharma pipeline projects worldwide, according to some analyses. The recent deals point to an emerging trend in which the traditional licensor/licensee model focused on a small number of candidates – such as Pfizer's own $6 billion licensing deal for Shenyang-based 3SBio's VEGFxPD-1 bispecific for cancer a year ago – is moving towards larger-scale, strategic-level alliances.
A Goldman Sachs report recently estimated that around 46% of all new drug molecules that began human trials in the first half of 2025 originated in Chinese biopharma companies, up from 17% a decade ago.
Pfizer said the Innovant deal covers "licensing, co-development, and co-commercialisation" rights across a portfolio of ADCs with "novel differentiated payloads and multi-specific antibodies with differentiated immune-engaging features and unique designs."
The companies said they will co-develop and share costs for some of the as-yet unidentified programmes as they advance through clinical development. Innovent is responsible for taking the programmes through phase 1 testing, with Pfizer stepping in thereafter to handle global development.
Pfizer has exclusive global rights to four of the 12 and exclusive rights outside Greater China for another four. The two companies will share rights outside Greater China for the final group of four, with Innovent co-commercialising them in the US and Europe, which will provide a major opportunity for it to expand onto the international stage.
"This agreement brings together best-in-industry expertise of Pfizer and Innovent to advance novel cancer medicines to patients at a global scale," said Dr Hui Zhou, chief R&D officer for Innovent's oncology pipeline.
"By leveraging both companies' complementary resources, we can develop our early-stage oncology pipeline with greater speed and impact to help bring innovative therapies to patients more efficiently worldwide."
