While the biopharma industry’s attention globally this year has been mainly directed towards the US and what policies President Donald Trump may, or may not, implement, the Asia Pacific region continues to present multiple opportunities and is an increasingly important source of innovative drugs.
The headline theme since last year’s Scrip Asia 100 has undoubtedly been China’s continued rapid emergence as a global R&D powerhouse. As of early 2025, close to 1,500 new drugs were in Chinese development, rapidly surpassing the US’s total, while Chinese companies accounted for over a third of all the first launches of new active substances globally.
The top two in terms of number of NAS launches were both Chinese companies, which also dominated the top 10 ranking in Citeline’s Pharma R&D Annual Review, based on data to the beginning of this year.
The pace of deals under which major multinationals licensed either global or selected rights to assets originated by Chinese companies has accelerated so far in 2025, with one of the biggest alliances including a potential $12bn tie-up between GSK and Hengrui in July. According to some analyses, fully a third of licensing agreements (by deal value) came from China in the first half of 2025, versus just single-digit percentages only a few years ago.
But the story was not entirely about China. The Citeline data also showed South Korea was the third most common base for all companies globally reporting active R&D. Indeed, Korean companies struck several sizeable cross-border deals based on their own rising innovation, including ABL Bio with a $2.6bn neurodegenerative deal with GSK and Abion’s $1.3bn antibody collaboration with an unidentified global partner.
While the precise shape of policy changes under the country’s new president was still unclear at the time of writing but the indications look generally positive for the biopharma industry.
Japan meanwhile has been most notable for other forms of transactions – non-pharma private equity and investment firms moving in to unlock change and value at mid-sized pharma companies.
Bain Capital’s early February announcement it would acquire Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma for around $3.4bn was followed by Blackstone’s agreement to acquire 60% of leading contract research organization CMIC, then Sumitomo Pharma divested its Asia pharma business to major Japanese trading house Marubeni for $480m. Shionogi also swooped in to pay just over $1bn for Japan Tobacco’s pharma ops including Torii Pharmaceutical.
Across in India, perhaps the biggest topic preoccupying the industry there this year has been how the huge US generics market will be influenced by changing policies under the Trump administration, particularly related to pharma-specific tariffs and the onshoring of manufacturing capacity.
Indian firms too crossed a bridge in terms of innovation, with the deal between Glenmark and AbbVie for a first-in-class trispecific antibody for multiple myeloma valued at close to $2bn alliance.
This introduction touches on just some of the stand-out trends of the past year. We hope the carefully selected data, articles and analyses in this year’s Scrip Asia 100 will give you deeper insights, helped by the expertise and contacts of our on-the-ground regional team, and enable you to better understand the complex mix of factors shaping this key part of the biopharma world.
