The chaos Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy has injected into the U.S. vaccine market could have long-term consequences as vaccine makers reevaluate business decisions and pipelines.

The newly released 2026 edition of Clarivate’s Drugs to Watch report highlights 11 potential blockbusters that could change treatment paradigms for patients.

After raising $292 million in its Hong Kong IPO, AI discovery and development biotech, Insilico Medicine, signed an R&D collaboration with French pharma Servier SA valued at $888 million to discover and develop innovative oncology therapies by combining Insilico's AI-driven drug discovery platforms with Servier's global expertise in cancer drug development.

Abbvie Inc. signed a $1.1 billion New Year’s Eve deal with China’s Zelgen Biopharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., gaining ex-China rights to Zelgen’s lead oncology asset, alveltamig (ZG-006), a trispecific T-cell engager targeting delta-like ligand 3. Under terms of the deal, Abbvie will pay Zelgen an up-front fee of $100 million, and Zelgen is eligible to receive $60 million in near-term milestones and could receive up to $1.075 billion in additional development, regulatory and commercial milestones, alongside tiered royalties on net sales outside China. Zelgen retains full rights in China.

Over the course of the year, and continuing into the latest scientific meetings, an extraordinary breadth of new antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) designs was reported, with innovations spanning targets, linkers, payloads, conjugation chemistries and overall architectures. Once defined by a simple “one target, one payload” model, the field is lately expanding into a more versatile and diverse therapeutic space.

Wife-and-husband team, J. Jean Cui and Y. Peter Li, launched Blossomhill Therapeutics Inc. in mid-2020 to focus on next-generation, macrocyclic inhibitors against oncology targets. The couple had planned to take some time off to rest and do a little traveling, but then the pandemic hit. “This was a great time [to start a new company],” Cui told BioWorld. “Nothing to do but reading and thinking.”

Hutchmed (China) Ltd. has moved closer to establishing China’s first domestically developed FGFR-targeted therapy for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, after the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) accepted its NDA for fanregratinib (HMPL-453) and granted the drug priority review.

U.S. policy, China’s strategic rise, blockbuster deals and AI dominated South Korea’s biotechnology industry this year, with U.S. tariffs and the Biosecure Act’s hitch onto 2026 legislation serving as major topics of speculation.

China’s National Medical Products Administration approved Innovent Biologics Inc.’s NDA for Tabosun (ipilimumab N01, IBI-310) in combination with sintilimab as neoadjuvant treatment for stage IIB-III resectable microsatellite instability-high or mismatch repair deficient colon cancer.