cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/53789138

archive.is/0U70e

In May Pfizer, America’s biggest drugmaker, agreed to pay $1.25bn in fees to 3SBio, a Chinese biotech firm, for the rights to manufacture and sell an experimental cancer drug outside China, if approved.

GlaxoSmithKline, a British rival, struck a $500m deal with Hengrui, another Chinese company, for a lung-disease treatment and the options to buy 11 more drugs, that together may be valued at as much as $12bn

Such deals are no longer exceptions. In the first half of this year nearly a third of all global licensing agreements signed by big pharma were with Chinese firms—four times the share in 2021