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Pfizer, Innovent Ink Up-to-$10.5B+ Cancer Treatment Collaboration

Published

2 weeks ago

May 29, 2026

Pfizer and Innovent Biologics will partner to research and develop 12 early-stage and de novo antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) designed to treat various cancers, the companies said today, through a collaboration that could generate up to $10.5 billion for the Chinese biotech.

The companies said they have signed a strategic global licensing and collaboration agreement that includes licensing, co-development, and co-commercialization deals for both the ADCs, which would be created with payloads that differentiate them from other conjugates, as well as multi-specific antibodies, to be developed with unique designs and differentiated immune-engaging features.

Pfizer and Innovent plan to work across a portfolio of 12 programs—eight early-stage programs originating with Innovent, and four Pfizer discovery programs. The companies said they will co-develop and share costs for selected programs as they advance them through clinical development.

The collaboration is intended to marry Pfizer’s global scientific, clinical development, regulatory, and commercial scale capabilities with Innovent’s scientific discovery and clinical capabilities in oncology.

“By combining Innovent’s discovery and early clinical development with Pfizer’s global research and development and commercialization capabilities, we have an opportunity not only to strengthen our pipeline, but to accelerate the delivery of breakthroughs that can redefine standards of care and make a meaningful difference in patients’ lives,” Jeff Legos, Pfizer’s chief oncology officer, said in a statement.

Racing the ‘patent cliff’

Like other biopharma giants, Pfizer is racing the proverbial “patent cliff” by building a pipeline of new treatments capable of recouping the billions that it stands to lose in coming years as its aging blockbuster drugs lose patent exclusivity in the U.S. and other key markets.

GEN’s A-List of Top 20 Drugs Heading for the Patent Cliff through 2029 includes two Pfizer treatments. One is Prevnar 13/Prevenar 13 (pneumococcal 13-valent conjugate vaccine [diphtheria CRM197 Protein]), which lost U.S. exclusivity starting March 31; and the prostate cancer drug Xtandi^® (enzalutamide), co-marketed with Astellas Pharma and set to lose U.S. exclusivity in 2027.

Pfizer generated $6.494 billion last year, up 1% from 2024, and another $1.69 billion in the first quarter, up 2% from a year ago, in revenues from its Prevnar family, which includes Prevnar 20/Prevenar 20 (Pneumococcal 20-valent Conjugate Vaccine), as well as the Prevnar 13/Prevenar 13 vaccines.

Xtandi racked up $2.194 billion in 2025, up 8% from a year earlier, and $444 million in Q1, down 3% from the year-ago quarter, in revenues in the U.S. and more than 90 other countries, including the EU and Japan—primarily reflecting alliance revenues and royalty revenues.

Oncology focus

Oncology is among therapeutic areas where Pfizer has sought to bolster its pipeline and portfolio of marketed drugs in recent years. The pharma giant acquired ADC-focused drug developer Seagen for $43 billion in 2023, a deal that cleared expected antitrust hurdles and doubled Pfizer’s oncology pipeline to some 60 programs spanning multiple modalities, including ADCs, small molecules, bispecifics and other immunotherapies.

Last year, Pfizer launched an up-to-$1.5 billion global ex-China licensing agreement with another Chinese biotech, 3SBio. In that deal, Pfizer agreed to pay $1.25 billion upfront, make a $100 million equity investment in 3SBio equity, and pay up to $150 million in return for an option for exclusive development and commercialization rights in China to SSGJ-707, a bispecific antibody targeting PD-1 and VEGF.

Outside of oncology, Pfizer acquired obesity drug developer Metsera for up-to-$10 billion last October following a bidding war with Novo Nordisk that ended with some help from Washington.

And in February, Pfizer inked a commercialization deal of undisclosed value with Chinese drug developer Hangzhou Sciwind Biosciences giving Pfizer exclusive commercialization rights in China to the obesity therapy ecnoglutide, an new‑generation cAMP‑biased glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP‑1) receptor agonist delivered via injection.

While Innovent has successfully developed an obesity treatment, mazdutide, the company specializes in cancer drug development, building a combined portfolio and development pipeline of 37 programs—23 of them in oncology including the PD-1 inhibitor Tyvyt^® (sintilimab). The fully human IgG4 monoclonal antibody was first approved in China in 2018 and is now indicated to treat three forms of non-small cell lung cancer, classic Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and forms of endometrial, gastric/esophageal, kidney, and liver cancers.

‘Greater speed and impact’

“By leveraging both companies’ complementary resources, we can develop our early-stage oncology pipeline with greater speed and impact to help bring innovative therapies to patients more efficiently worldwide,” stated Hui Zhou, MD, PhD, Innovent’s chief R&D officer for its oncology pipeline. “Furthermore, co-developing and co-commercializing key projects in the U.S. and Europe expands Innovent’s global reach.”

Innovent plans to carry out development of the Pfizer-partnered programs through Phase I, applying its discovery engine and robust early clinical capabilities, after which Pfizer will oversee future global development. Pfizer will receive an exclusive global license for four programs, and assume their global development costs, as well as an exclusive license outside Greater China for four other programs, having agreed to shoulder an unspecified majority of the development costs.

Pfizer and Innovent also agreed to co-develop four programs globally, sharing their development costs. The companies plan to co-commercialize in the U.S., the European Union (E.U.), and the United Kingdom (U.K.), agreeing in return to share their profits—while Innovent will retain Greater China rights to these programs.

Pfizer has agreed to pay Innovent $650 million upfront and up to $9.85 billion in payments tied to achieving development, regulatory, and commercial milestones. Pfizer also agreed to pay Innovent up to double-digit royalties on sales of each licensed product if approved, with the companies agreeing to share their profits in the U.S., the EU, and the U.K.

The collaboration transaction is expected to close in the third quarter, subject to regulatory approvals.

In October, Innovent launched an up to $11.4 billion collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceutical aimed at speeding up the development of Innovent’s next-generation immuno-oncology therapies as well as ADCs.

The post Pfizer, Innovent Ink Up-to-$10.5B+ Cancer Treatment Collaboration appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

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STAT+: At hospital finance conference, a call to end the friction that’s keeping costs high

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — At this week’s annual meeting of hospital finance leaders, the exhibit hall was packed with dozens of billing and collections companies. Armed with candy, tote bags, and pens, they smiled at passersby, eager to explain why their tactics would extract the most money from health insurers.

The sheer number of “revenue cycle” vendors who attended the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s annual conference in Maryland — outnumbering even the hospital attendees, according to a list shared by an organizer — was a visible reminder of the enormous industry built around just paying medical bills.

The U.S. health care industry spends roughly $200 billion annually on financial transactions: claims processing, payment, collections, and prior authorization. And yet the proliferation of billing vendors seemed to clash with the main theme of HFMA’s conference, affordability, spotlighting the need to simplify the billing process so that health care is less costly and more accessible for patients.

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Published

1 hour ago

June 12, 2026

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Beyond sunshine: Iberia’s biotech moment has arrived with developing capital networks

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3 hours ago

June 12, 2026

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Strong science, lower costs and growing capital networks are putting Spain and Portugal on the biotech investment map, even as structural bottlenecks persist, according to two investors.

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Laser‑Driven Phase Contrast Enhances Cryo‑EM Resolution of Small Proteins

Published

8 hours ago

June 12, 2026

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You know when you are at the eye doctor getting an updated prescription, and suddenly the world snaps into sharper focus? Physicists at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, have now done something similar for electron microscopy. By introducing phase contrast into a cryo‑electron microscope, they have delivered dramatically sharper images of some of biology’s smallest and most elusive proteins.

The advance comes from a new laser phase plate (LPP), described in the paper “Laser phase plate improves structure determination of small proteins by cryo‑EM,” which was published recently in Science. Led by physicist Holger Mueller, PhD, of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the team demonstrated that a laser‑driven phase plate can overcome one of cryo‑EM’s most persistent limitations: poor contrast for small proteins.

Cryo-EM images of two proteins, apoferritin and hemoglobin, taken without and with a laser phase plate. The images are analyzed in a computer to produce detailed 3D structures of the proteins. [Holger Müller, Jessie Zhang/UC Berkeley]

Cryo‑EM has transformed structural biology over the past decade, earning a Nobel Prize in 2017 for enabling high‑resolution structures without crystallization. But despite its impact, the technique still struggles with proteins below ~70 kilodaltons—a size range that includes about 90% of the human proteome. “Because of signal-to-noise limitations, the majority of human and animal proteins are too small to be analyzed by these methods [cryo-EM and cryoelectron tomography]. The increase in signal-to-noise ratio provided by this laser phase plate is expected to overcome these important limitations.”

The new LPP begins to address that problem. The LPP uses an intense, continuous‑wave laser to shift the phase of the electron beam itself. This produces true phase contrast without dimming or destabilizing the beam. Mueller described the laser focus as “75 kilowatts focused to a few microns… That’s more powerful than what you use for welding. It has more power than a military laser. It builds up the brightest continuous laser focus ever.”

Installed in a custom Thermo Fisher Titan Krios, the LPP immediately improved the clarity and resolvability of small proteins, including hemoglobin, which sits at the lower limit of what today’s cryo‑EM instruments can handle. As the authors wrote in the abstract: “Here, we show that the laser phase plate (LPP)… enhances the resolution in single-particle reconstruction of small proteins by improving specimen-motion correction, recovery of information from the early frames, as well as particle visualization, 3D classification, and alignment.”

phase plate cover Cryo-EM — A laser (purple) is powerfully amplified by highly polished mirrors and focused on the electron beam (blue) to shift its phase and increase the cryo-EM microscope’s contrast, allowing biologists to image smaller proteins and the crowded structures inside cells. [Sayo Studio]

These improvements were achieved using standard defocus ranges and reconstruction workflows. “For the most challenging cases—small particles, bad specimens—the laser produces a very considerable advantage,” Mueller said.

The impact extends beyond single‑particle analysis. Cryo‑electron tomography (cryo‑ET), which assembles multiple angular views of a molecule or protein into a three-dimensional image, stands to benefit even more. “With cryo-ET, we’re looking at small, very complicated cellular material that’s incredibly crowded inside the cell,” said Bridget Carragher, PhD, founding technical director of imaging at Biohub. “It’s like a forest of trees, and you’re trying to find one leaf on one tree in there. Cryo-ET needs a dramatic step forward in contrast, so we can start to see what’s going on inside the cell. That’s what the laser phase plate promises to give us.”

Biohub is developing a dual‑laser version of the system, designed to reduce component wear and minimize aberrations. Meanwhile, Mueller’s team is pushing toward imaging proteins as small as 17 kilodaltons, a threshold that would open access to vast regions of the human proteome previously invisible to cryo‑EM.

“This technology is a step function change for biology,” said Stephani Otte, PhD, Biohub’s vice president of imaging science. “What was once invisible will become visible—and that changes everything about how we understand disease.”

“The bottom line is, if you have a large protein and a really good sample—a fresh one or one frozen without bubbles, for example—you may not need the phase plate to get a single, high-quality image. But for a small protein and a bad sample, laser-on is best,” Mueller said. “This could fill an enormous gap in our knowledge of protein structures that can’t be crystallized or are too small for today’s cryo-EM. And it will be revolutionary for cryo-ET.”

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