Eyes on China
By Paul Verdin
A global theme to watch in 2025 is China’s growing impact on pharmaceutical R&D. This influence is readily apparent in pipeline data, which reveals the extent of the country’s reach.
Across the industry’s total clinical pipeline, a Chinese company is involved in at least a fifth of development programs, Evaluate Pharma reveals. Within specific next generation therapeutic niches China’s dominance is even more clear. More than 50% of the antibody-drug conjugate, bispecific antibody, and chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) clinical pipeline is China-originated or China-partnered.
That China is such a driver of these lauded frontiers of pharmaceutical innovation is testament to the country’s growing importance on the global pharma stage. This report confirms this trend, with products being developed by Chinese companies featuring in the biggest launches of 2025 and most valuable pipeline assets.
Deals tell a similar story, with licensing from China-based companies ever-present on the industry newswires. A prominent recent example is Merck & Co’s licensing of LM-299, an investigational anti-PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody, from China-based LaNova Medicines in a deal worth up to $3.3 billion. The transaction is a clear example of established pharma looking to China for innovation and potential best-in-class candidates.
It is not only large groups looking to China for assets. A similar bispecific, ivonescimab, was licensed by Summit Theraputics from Akeso Biopharma at the end of 2022, an asset that has already demonstrated Keytruda-beating outcomes in a China-based lung cancer study. More recently, BioNTech acquired China-based Biotheus in November in a deal worth close to $1 billion, again to access anti-PD-1/VEGF bispecific innovation.
These trends indicate that China’s influence on the global pharma industry is likely to deepen in 2025. There is a big ‘but’ here, however, in the shape of the incoming Trump administration (see earlier chapter: Trump’s Return: Pharma Trades Disagreeable White House for Unpredictable One). President-elect Trump has expressed a clear desire to protect US interests, that many fear could trigger a trade war. And don’t forget the Biosecure Act, which seeks to limit US business with China headquartered life science companies. The act, which has yet to be passed, could find renewed support from the new administration.
Across the industry’s total clinical pipeline, a Chinese company is involved in at least a fifth of development programs, Evaluate Pharma reveals.
