During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, China's innovative drugs made a promising start in their global expansion. According to the National Medical Products Administration's new incomplete statistics, the total amount of foreign licensing fees for Chinese innovative drugs in the first three months of this year has exceeded US$60 billion. This also means that the scale of foreign licensing fees for Chinese innovative drugs in 2026 in the first quarter has approached half of the total amount for the whole year of 2025. Data shows that the total amount of foreign licensing transactions for innovative drugs in 2025 exceeded US$135 billion. Behind the increase in the scale of foreign licensing is the international recognition of China's innovative drug research and development capabilities, and the entry of independent innovation into the "going global" harvest period.
On March 4th, Sanofi and China Biopharmaceuticals reached a $1.53 billion global licensing agreement, securing the global rights to the latter's JAK/ROCK dual-target inhibitor, rovalpitinib. It's worth noting that rovalpitinib is not a "promising drug" still in early clinical stages. It just received marketing approval from the China Food and Drug Administration in February for the first-line treatment of intermediate and high-risk myelofibrosis, proving to be a mature asset that has undergone commercial validation. More specifically, China Biopharmaceuticals relinquished all exclusive global rights to develop, produce, and commercialize the drug, a rare occurrence in the overseas transactions of local pharmaceutical companies.
On February 8th, Innovent Biologics and Eli Lilly & Company reached a strategic cooperation agreement to advance the global research and development of innovative drugs in the oncology and immunology fields. According to the agreement, Innovent Biologics will receive a total payment of $8.85 billion, including an initial payment of $350 million and milestone payments totaling $8.5 billion. It is reported that this cooperation in the oncology and immunology fields is the seventh collaboration between the two parties.
In February, American pharmaceutical company Madrigal Pharmaceuticals reached a licensing agreement with Suzhou RiboBio on an experimental liver disease project, with a potential transaction size of $4.4 billion. According to the agreement, RiboBio will authorize Madrigal to use its core RiboGalSTAR technology platform and siRNA chemical modification platform to develop six siRNA drugs for the treatment of MASH in preclinical studies, covering both single-target and dual-target products.
In January, AstraZeneca and China's Shijiazhuang Pharmaceutical Group reached a cooperation agreement with a potential value of up to $18.5 billion. Through this transaction, AstraZeneca acquired Shijiazhuang Pharmaceutical Group's long-acting peptide technology platform, which is expected to develop the next-generation GLP-1 weight loss therapy that requires only one administration per month.
It is worth mentioning that this agreement not only focuses on a single product, but also covers the entire long-acting peptide drug technology platform of Shijiazhuang Pharmaceutical Group and multiple research and development projects. According to the agreement, the licensing content covers a clinically ready project, SYH2082, as well as three pre-clinical research and development projects. According to the information, SYH2082 is a long-acting GLP-1R/GIPR agonist, currently advancing to Phase I clinical trials. This project targets the currently popular field of obesity and weight management treatment. In addition to these four specific projects, both parties will also rely on the technology platform of Shijiazhuang Pharmaceutical Group to cooperate on another four new projects.
Industry insiders indicate that the surge of Chinese innovative drugs entering the global market is the culmination of years of research and development accumulation, coupled with policy support. However, the promising start of the "going global" with a value of 60 billion US dollars may just be the beginning for Chinese innovative drugs. As the "15th Five-Year Plan" progresses, China's pharmaceutical innovation will continue to focus on cutting-edge technologies and strengthen global cooperation, transitioning from being a "major player" in innovative drugs to a "powerhouse" in this field. In the future, Chinese pharmaceutical companies will play a more significant role in global pharmaceutical innovation.