Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) is the latest big pharmaceutical company to collaborate with Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, a Chinese drugmaker that has become a popular partner for international firms in recent years.
BMS plans to pay Hengrui $600 million up front, followed by $175 million in annual payments over the next 2 years. “The potential total value of the agreement is up to approximately $15.2 billion, including the exercise of available options for the joint discovery programs and the achievement of applicable development, regulatory, and commercial milestones for all programs,” the companies say in a press release.
The two firms have agreed to jointly develop 13 early-stage drug candidates in the areas of oncology, hematology, and immunology. Four each will come from Hengrui and BMS, and the rest will be jointly discovered using Hengrui technology, Hengrui says in a presentation about the deal (PDF).
The deal is another example of Hengrui’s ability to attract Big Pharma to its doorstep. The company, founded in 1970, has its roots in making generic medicines, copycats of drugs that have gone off patent. Over time, it began working on innovative drugs, largely in oncology, and to date has commercialized 24 new drugs in China.
In recent years, Hengrui has aggressively partnered with Big Pharma companies outside China, often through out-licensing deals. Hengrui says it has completed 12 overseas business development transactions since 2023, including large-figure deals with GSK, Merck & Co., and, recently, Kailera Therapeutics, a US biotech focused on developing weight-loss drugs.
Between 2024 and 2025, Hengrui’s revenue from out-licensing its molecules to non-Chinese firms jumped more than 25%, to nearly $500 million, according to the firm’s 2025 financial results presentation (PDF).
US and European pharmaceutical companies have been shopping in China for late-stage molecules in recent years. But the BMS-Hengrui deal shows how major companies are now willing to invest in early-stage molecules developed by Chinese companies, says Juan Valencia, a thought leadership manager at PharmCube, a China-headquartered pharma intelligence firm.
“The first wave of Chinese assets that went abroad started giving results in the clinic not that long ago,” Valencia says. “So that is one of the reasons why there is more trust in China’s industry.”
Hengrui’s trajectory is a good case study of how traditional Chinese drugmakers have developed the know-how to invent innovative molecules, Valencia says. What many Chinese firms still lack is the ability to bring those molecules to global markets, which is why they lean on Western pharma companies, as seen in the BMS deal, he adds.
“But it is pretty obvious that at some point the Chinese biopharmaceutical industry is just not going to need foreign partners anymore,” Valencia says.
