1 hour ago
2
Alex Carchidi, The Motley Fool
Sun, May 31, 2026 astatine 1:05 PM CDT 5 min read
For astir of the past 3 decades, U.S.-listed biotech companies were just proxies for homemade American science. But now, that presumption is fraying. By 1 estimation from concern slope Jefferies, astir a 3rd of the industry's licensing spending successful 2025 went toward drugs and candidates that originated successful China, wherever little costs and faster regulators person turned its labs into a firehose of ready-to-license molecules and programs.
In antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) -- an progressively blase people of targeted therapies -- Chinese biotechs present proviso adjacent to 90% of planetary licensing activity. The question is, erstwhile you bargain a U.S. biotech banal whose astir promising programs were invented elsewhere, by different company, what are you really holding?
Missed Nvidia successful 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" awesome flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the archetypal clip successful years, that aforesaid "Total Conviction" awesome is flashing for a institution 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
In immoderate cases, the reply to that question mightiness incorporate an unpleasant astonishment for investors, which is wherefore this inclination of importing innovation is besides an emerging hazard worthy understanding.
It's unsafe to stake that American biotechs volition replicate overseas results
Summit Therapeutics (NASDAQ: SMMT) is simply a biotech with an concern thesis that's astir wholly babelike connected the occurrence of ivonescimab, an antibody therapy for assorted cancers that it licensed from China's Akeso successful 2022, paying $500 cardinal up beforehand and low-double-digit royalties connected sales. Summit didn't observe the molecule; it bought the close to merchantability it successful the U.S., Europe, and Japan.
In May 2025, according to the archetypal peek, investors were fixed information from ivonescimab's planetary signifier 3 proceedings for patients with antecedently treated, EGFR-mutated non-small compartment lung crab (NSCLC). Treatment with ivonescimab positive chemotherapy led to an awesome 48% summation successful progression-free endurance (PFS). But the information for wide endurance (how agelong patients lived) did not walk the threshold for statistical significance.
After the afloat proceedings information were presented aboriginal successful the year, determination was another, adjacent larger issue: The cohorts of patients from Western countries saw lone a 33% simplification successful the hazard of progression oregon death, versus a 45% simplification successful Chinese patients, with the Western group's payment not being statistically significant. And that's precisely the benignant of discrepancy that regulators astatine the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are apt to instrumentality contented with earlier they determine whether to o.k. ivonescimab, slated for mid-November of this year.
English (CA) · 
English (US) · 
Spanish (MX) ·