Pharma deals: Demand declines for validated assets

Over the past 12 months, pharma dealmaking showed waning demand for clinically validated, late-stage assets — a category that initially surged during the market downturn. Interest in new modalities remained high, but shifted toward bispecific antibodies and targeted protein degraders, while ADCs lost momentum and cell and gene therapies nearly fell off the map.

The industry’s largest companies have also been casting a wider net in China, with recent deals extending beyond the antibody-based oncology therapies that have long dominated East-West partnerships...