Calls for collaboration on drug innovation mount

A Chinese-developed lung cancer therapy drew significant attention at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting, the latest illustration of China's rapidly growing role in global pharmaceutical innovation and a rise that experts say demands collaboration rather than confrontation.

The experimental drug, ivonescimab, targets a type of lung cancer that is especially difficult to treat. In a late-stage clinical trial involving 532 patients in China, the therapy cut the risk of death by 34 percent, according to results released at the meeting, known as ASCO, which concluded on Tuesday in Chicago.

David R. Spigel, president and chief scientific officer at Sarah Cannon Research Institute and an ASCO expert in lung cancer, said in a news release that the therapy "provides a vital new path forward for patients with these difficult-to-treat cancers who have limited treatment options".

Ivonescimab was developed by the Chinese biopharmaceutical company Akeso. US-based Summit Therapeutics licensed the rights to the drug outside China in a deal worth up to $5 billion. Summit announced earlier this year that the US Food and Drug Administration had accepted its application seeking approval for the therapy.

The licensing deal is part of a broader surge in dealmaking between Western pharmaceutical giants and Chinese drugmakers. AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Sanofi and Eli Lilly are among the multinationals that have struck agreements with Chinese companies, mostly targeting oncology and obesity treatments, with total potential values ranging from roughly $3 billion to $18.5 billion.

"Deal volumes have increased dramatically, and the value of Chinese pharmaceutical companies has grown much faster than their Western counterparts," Joseph Scheeren, a pharmaceutical R&D and regulatory affairs expert with more than 35 years of experience across the US, Europe and Asia, told China Daily.

Last year alone, Chinese companies achieved four times the value creation of US companies. Currently, 30 percent of global business development deals involve Chinese companies, four times as many as in 2021, according to Scheeren, who is also a member of the advisory board of the University of Arizona R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy.

"I was told in oncology, specifically, that figure is more than 50 percent, so you can see there's a lot of activity going on in China's innovation sector," he added.

Those observations are backed by research published in March by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper, titled "From Free Rider to Innovator: The Rise of China's Drug Development", found that Chinese companies' out-licensing transactions to multinational corporations doubled relative to 2015 levels.

The researchers said the figures point to genuine indigenous capacity-building rather than multinationals simply relocating research and development operations to China.

Clinical trial activity

China's clinical trial activity has grown at a similar pace. The country accounted for less than 8 percent of global clinical trials in 2010. By 2020, it had surpassed the US in annual registered trial volume, reaching more than 5,000 trials per year by 2024, a 172 percent increase relative to the US.

Meanwhile, China's pharmaceutical ascent has also raised concerns in Washington. The US Biosecure Act, signed into law in late 2025, bars US pharmaceutical companies that receive federal funding from working with designated Chinese biotech firms.

"Attempts to frame these developments as geopolitical threats risk undermining the very partnerships that are driving scientific progress," a group of US and China-based researchers wrote in a paper recently published in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science.