Who Will Secure China's Next Blockbuster BD Deal in Innovative Drugs?

Recently, Hengrui Pharma announced a significant cooperation agreement with GSK: Hengrui will license the global rights (excluding mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) of its core respiratory pipeline product HRS-9821 and 11 early-stage projects to GSK. The deal includes a $500 million upfront payment, potential milestone payments of up to $12 billion, and sales royalties.

According to PharmaCube statistics, this is the 100th License-out deal in China in 2025. Looking back at the beginning of 2025, the industry did not anticipate:In just half a year, the total amount of China's innovative drug License-out has exceeded $60 billion, surpassing the total BD transactions for the entire year of 2024.; among them, there were as many as 16 single transactions exceeding 1 billion US dollars. The frequency of significant deals in China continues to rise, but as the focus of business development shifts towards earlier stages of research and development, the hidden potential of promising products also increases simultaneously.

PharmaCube and Tsinghua University Institute of Regulatory Science for PharmaceuticalsJointly ReleasedChina's Innovative Drug Industry in a Global Perspective: A Decade in Review and OutlookReportThe report shows that, as of the end of 2024, the cumulative number of active innovative drugs developed by Chinese companies has reached 3,575, surpassing the United States to become the global leader. Among these new drug pipelines, which candidates may lead to the next significant BD deal could potentially be inferred based on the common patterns observed from nearly 400 China-originated varieties that have entered overseas markets, providing a basis to predict the next potential blockbuster BD target.

● Tip 1: 91% of global blockbuster deals are in the top five of global R&D progress.

According to the statistics from PharmaCube, blockbuster deals (transactions with a total amount ≥ US$1 billion) are mainly concentrated on drugs ranked among the top three globally in terms of R&D progress. The more advanced the R&D progress ranking of a drug, the higher the upper limit of the transaction amount. From the distribution of global R&D progress rankings and transaction amounts of drugs over the past decade, it can be seen that approximately 91% of the main products involved in blockbuster deals rank among the top five globally in their respective fields, and about 78% rank among the top three globally.

● Tip 2: 80% of China's major overseas varieties have R&D progress ranking in the top five globally, and the number of competitive pipelines in the track is ≥5.

Among the major License-out deals reached in China so far, over 80% of the 52 core products have their R&D progress ranked among the top five globally. Moreover, the number of competitive pipelines in each related field is nearly all ≥5, indirectly reflecting that these fields possess high certainty and have attracted multiple companies to invest.

Therefore, we can speculate that the next major BD product to go overseas from China is very likely to meet two major conditions:

1. Global R&D progress ranks among the top five in the track

2. Number of competitive pipelines in the track ≥ 5

Based on the above two points, with the help of the PharmaCube NextPharma database Track Ranking Function, can easily lock these "potential blockbuster BD varieties". The database categorizes nearly 30,000 innovative drug pipelines worldwide that meet the criteria into over 9,900 tracks based on the drug's mechanism of action (target + pharmacological type) and ranks the drugs in the same track according to their development phase (including start time), providing a specific ranking for each drug to intuitively reflect the global / China R&D competitive landscape.

Taking bispecific antibodies, which were highly favored by TOP MNCs in the first half of 2025, as an example, preliminary screening can be conducted according to the figure below.Bispecific AntibodyPotential blockbuster BD product.

In addition, with the help of the database, more dimensions can be applied to screen potential BD products:

① Screen by pharmacological type: For example, what are the potential blockbuster BD products worth paying attention to in the fields of antibody-drug conjugates/cell therapy/gene editing?

② Filter by R&D Institution:What Other Products from Hengrui Pharma, Which Was Hot in Overseas Markets in the First Half of the Year, Are Worth Watching?

③Screening by Potential Targets：What potential BD products are worth attention for some emerging targets in the field of immunity and inflammation, such as IRAK4, PDE3/4, etc.?