Eli Lilly has partnered with China-based InnoCare Pharma in a five-drug strong research and license pact.
As per the deal, Lilly will pay up to $100m upfront, with a further $3.25bn available in development and commercial milestone payments. InnoCare will also be in line for royalties for drug sales that arise from the partnership.
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Details between the US big pharma company and Chinese biopharma are scarce. The two only stated that the collaboration will see Innocare use its drug discovery platform to “discover and advance compounds against up to five targets to address critical unmet medical needs”.
InnoCare describes itself as a biopharma focusing on cancer and autoimmune disease treatments. The company already has three approved drugs in China: solid tumour drug Yinuoxin (zurletrectinib), blood cancer therapy Hibruka (orelabrutinib), and lymphoma treatment Minjuvi (tafasitamab). Minjuvi is also approved under the brand name Monjuvi in the US and Europe, amongst other countries.
Amongst its pipeline are separate inhibitors of BCL2, BTK, and TYK2-JH1, which span autoimmune diseases and oncology indications. As per the company, it has more than 10 innovative drug candidates in clinical development.
“We are excited to leverage our R&D platform to collaborate with a global pharmaceutical leader like Lilly. We are dedicated to expanding our partnership and innovation footprint,” said Dr Jasmine Cui, co-founder and CEO of InnoCare.
China’s deal streak continues
Over the past decade, China has become a popular destination for Western big pharma searching for pipeline additions. Licensing deals between US and Chinese biopharma saw a 280% increase between 2020 and 2024, according to analysis by GlobalData, parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology.
Further GlobalData analysis has found that the top 20 deals in China since 2024 were worth a total of $85.6bn, with more than 20% of those deals occurring in H1 2026. The deals have also moved from low-cost and single-asset deals to acquisitions and higher-cost partnerships between big pharma and Chinese biotech.
This includes AstraZeneca’s $18.5bn obesity deal with CSPC, which was forged in January 2026, and Bristol Myers Squibb’s $15.2bn deal with Jiangsu Hengrui Pharma in May 2026.
GlobalData Healthcare has published a new Intelligence Briefing, “The Two-Way Street: From Stocking the Pipeline to Acquiring Development Platforms, The Next Frontier for China Biopharma,” following the second edition of Arena International’s Outsourcing in Clinical Trials & Clinical Trial Supply China (OCT & CTS China), held at the Renaissance Suzhou Hotel on 8 and 9 September 2026.
Eli Lilly has conducted its fair share of deals in China already this year. The most high value of these was a collaboration worth up to $8.5bn with Innovent Biologics in February.
As of the end of 2025, China had 4,751 innovative drugs in the pipeline, accounting for one-third of the global total and placing it first in the world for drugs under development, according to the Chinese government. The country is beginning a new strategy to increase its share of originally innovated drugs by 2030.
