Despite its massive $10.5 billion size and 12-drug scope, Pfizer’s oncology deal with Innovent Biologics took less than five months to forge, but not without undergoing some stress tests.
The deal talks started at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco in January this year, Innovent CEO Michael Yu, Ph.D., told Fierce Biotech.
From the start, Pfizer preferred a single multi-asset deal. Hunting for a dozen different assets from separate companies—and managing those alliances later—was simply too logistically cumbersome. To Innovent, the sentiment was the same.
Innovent has a long history of working with multinational pharma companies (MNCs), dating back to its decade-long collaboration with Eli Lilly that began in 2015 and added its seventh chapter in February.
“We understand what MNCs want,” Yu said. “Their motivation is to cover more projects with one company, so they don’t have to keep shopping around. We feel the exact same way.”
“The effort to conduct search and evaluation, due diligence, negotiations, technology transfers and alliance management on an asset-by-asset basis is not small,” Helen Chen, global sector co-head for healthcare at L.E.K. Consulting, said in an email interview with Fierce. “Having a bundled deal with multi-asset collaborations help reduce the transaction efforts. Familiarity with each others’ capabilities and style reduces misunderstandings and enhances efficiency.”
Multi-asset partnerships have become more popular between Big Pharma and large Chinese companies—even though single-program deals and platform technology research alliances remain the most common, especially among smaller biotechs. Last year, GSK also signed a 12-asset deal with China’s Hengrui Pharma potentially worth $12 billion. And Bristol Myers Squibb followed this May with a 13-program alliance with Hengrui.
These large deals were made possible in recent years thanks to an enlarged pool of molecules and improved confidence in the integrity of clinical data from China, Yu said.
After the JPM conference, Pfizer sent a team to China and visited several local companies, including Innovent, according to Yu.
Pfizer dug into Innovent’s drug development track record and discovery engine and was “very excited in what we saw about the quality,” Johanna Bendell, M.D., Pfizer’s chief development officer of oncology, told Fierce in a separate interview.
A two-way selection process ensued. Pfizer only went for drugs that fit in its portfolio, leading to its selection of altogether eight existing molecules, including one already in the clinic, four in the IND-stage, and four preclinical candidates. Innovent will also design four new molecules at the request of Pfizer, which will decide whether to take them up following clinical proof-of-concept tests performed by its Chinese partner.
Co-Co or no deal
Within the deal, Innovent negotiated a term to co-develop and co-commercialize four programs that it believes holds larger market potential based on existing information, according to Yu.
Pfizer initially resisted the co-development, co-commercialization structure, Yu recalled. Leveraging interest from other parties, Innovent threatened to walk away.
At least three other potential partners were interested in a colorectal cancer multi-specific antibody candidate, Yu noted. In the U.S., colorectal cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer and the second-leading cause of cancer-related death, with its rates also rising in younger adults.
Underlying Innovent’s insistence was an ambition to become a global pharma company.
“For Chinese biopharma companies, if you only focus on the domestic market, it doesn’t matter how good you are, you’re still just second- or third-tier players,” Yu said. “Innovent is a second- or third-tier company today.”
Market reality determines that a company with first-tier ambition must aim for the Western market. On average, a drug would get 50% to 55% of its revenue from the U.S. and 20% to 25% from Europe, while China roughly constitutes 8% of the sales and merely 3% of the profit, Yu observed.
For now, Innovent’s global capabilities, including clinical development, regulatory affairs and manufacturing, are not robust enough to get a novel drug across the FDA by itself, the CEO acknowledged.
On the commercial side, Innovent is no better than a biotech startup when it comes to reimbursement negotiations, placement on hospitals’ drug formularies, medical affairs, as well as distribution and marketing pathways in the U.S., he added.
“That’s why we have to find a company that is willing to take this journey together with us,” Yu said.
That was the same reason why Innovent pursued a co-development and co-commercialization deal structure with Takeda on a potential first-in-class PD-1/IL-2 bispecific antibody fusion protein called IBI363 (TAK-928).
A global 2030 plan
IBI363 is being tested in a global phase 3 trial in PD-(L)1-pretreated squamous non-small cell lung cancer with a second phase 3 being planned in nonsquamous histology.
The drug is among three of Innovent-developed assets that either entered or are ready to start global phase 3 trials, alongside a Claudin 18.2 ADC also included in the Takeda deal and a VEGFxAng2 bispecific that’s been partnered with newly formed eye disease specialist Ollin Biosciences.
Innovent’s publicly disclosed goal is to grow that number to at least five assets by 2030, while the company has set more detailed internal targets, including the percentage of global sales in its overall revenues, Yu said.
The deals Innovent has signed so far “not only bring substantial financial returns to the company, but more importantly, integrate global resources to accelerate the realization of our pipeline's value and help us build the core capabilities needed for our journey to becoming a truly global biopharmaceutical company,” Yu said during Innovent’s 2025 full-year earnings call in March.
“We are confident to propose our Vision 2030: evolving from a leading biopharmaceutical company in China into a global premier biopharmaceutical company,” he said.
Eventually, Innovent could find a niche product with limited number of physicians involved to try launching alone in the U.S., Yu said.
After signing the massive Pfizer deal, Innovent is taking a break from oncology business development to focus on the ones already underway, including those with Roche, Yu said. But the company remains open to striking deals in other disease areas.
Innovent’s portfolio currently spreads across four large therapeutic areas: oncology, cardiovascular and metabolic disease, immunology and ophthalmology.
To Yu, becoming a global pharma also means narrowing down. Admiring how disciplined Big Pharma companies are in their selection of focus areas, Yu suggested that Innovent’s pipeline is too broad for a company of its size.
He raised the example of oncology. While there are about 2,000 tumor types, pharma companies typically only focus on three to four cancers, he said.
“We ought to cut 50% of [disease areas] in the future,” Yu said. “We should be more focused.”