Pfizer licenses Chinese cancer drug

Pfizer licensed a new Chinese cancer drug for $1.25 billion, a sign of Chinese biotech’s steady move from imitator to innovator.

The treatment, made by Shenyang-based 3SBio, is being tested on several tumor types: The company’s shares leapt 52% on the deal, which it hopes will be a rival to the world’s top-selling drug Keytruda. Novo Nordisk and Merck have both also paid hundreds of millions for China-made drugs recently.

China’s pharma industry once focused on creating generic forms of Western drugs, but since around 2011 has become a growing source of new medicines, a 2024 report noted, comparable to Japan’s economy pivoting from adapting foreign technologies to becoming a tech innovator in the decades after World War II.