Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals’ dealmaking spree rolls on, with a potential $1.1 billion transaction on a rival to AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo’s blockbuster Enhertu being the latest addition.
Hengrui is licensing certain rights to its HER2 antibody-drug conjugate trastuzumab rezetecan to a subsidiary of India’s Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, the two parties announced (PDF) Wednesday.
The deal is heavily back-loaded, as it features an upfront payment of $18 million and up to $1.09 billion in regulatory and commercial milestones, plus sales-based royalties.
The focus is on emerging markets; the partnership excludes the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, greater China, Central Asia and a few other countries.
“This collaboration with Glenmark is a significant step in Hengrui’s ongoing strategy to deepen its presence in emerging markets,” Jo Feng, president of Hengrui Pharma, said in a Sept. 24 statement (PDF). “We look forward to working together to enhance the accessibility of innovative therapies and to bring new hope to patients in more countries and regions.”
For Glenmark, the deal dovetails with the company’s strategy to expand its oncology pipeline, Glenn Saldanha, chairman and managing director of Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, said in a statement.
Last year, the Indian pharma bagged rights in certain territories to envafolimab, a subcutaneous PD-L1 inhibitor developed by a trio of Chinese companies. However, that drug has since failed in a pivotal trial in undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma or myxofibrosarcoma, forcing its U.S. partner Tracon Pharmaceuticals to close up shop.
Hengrui is angling trastuzumab rezetecan as a direct competitor to Enhertu, which generated $3.75 billion in global sales last year and $2.29 billion in the first half of 2025.
Both ADCs use trastuzumab as the antibody guide and both utilize an exatecan derivative as the toxic payload. The Hengrui med carries rezetecan, whereas Enhertu leverages deruxtecan.
Rezetecan “has high membrane permeability, enabling a bystander killing effect, which further enhances the antitumor efficacy,” Hengrui explained in a securities filing.
Trastuzumab rezetecan was approved in China in May 2025 for the treatment of second-line non-small cell lung cancer with HER2-activating mutations, with a breast cancer application also under review by Chinese authorities. The Glenmark licensing deal follows the granting of an orphan drug designation from the FDA for the drug in combination with Hengrui’s PD-L1 inhibitor adebrelimab and chemo in stomach cancer.
Besides Enhertu, Hengrui’s HER2 ADC faces another competitor in RemeGen’s China-approved disitamab vedotin, which has been out-licensed to Pfizer.
Hengrui has been busy with business development lately. Its recent deals include a potential $12 billion biobucks, up-to-12-asset deal with GSK and a lipoprotein(a) cardiovascular partnership with Merck & Co. that could be worth nearly $2 billion.
In addition to HER2, Hengrui’s ADC pipeline covers other popular targets such as TROP2 (targeted by Gilead Sciences’ Trodelvy and AZ and Daiichi’s Datroway), Nectin-4 (targeted by Pfizer and Astellas’ Padcev), Claudin 18.2 (Astellas’ Vyloy), HER3 (Merck and Daiichi’s patritumab deruxtecan) and CD79b (Roche’s Polivy).