Covering WuXi AppTec, WuXi Biologics, WuXi XDC, Pharmaron, Asymchem and Porton — China’s CXDMO leaders — plus Samsung Biologics, Lonza and the global CDMO frontier: results, capacity, M&A and partnerships.
8Companies Tracked
128Stories
5Segments · WuXi / Domestic / Global / Insight / New Drugs
With Q3 earnings behind us, we shift the lens from 'who is making money' to 'which modalities are incubating the next wave of CDMO orders.' This piece takes stock—across peptides, gene editing, nucleic acids and bispecific/multispecific antibodies—of the dig-able trends, capacity levels and the hard data points we consider most important, with a CDMO-oriented cross-modality conclusion.
At Ledu Life Science Park in Shanghai's Baoshan district, six 15,000-litre bioreactors — 90,000 litres of biologics capacity in total — have sat idle for more than two years, and the company's biologics subsidiary entered court-administered bankruptcy liquidation in December 2025. Ledu had once pitched a 1.3-million-litre capacity target in 2021, within reach of Samsung Biologics' 2032 plan. Meanwhile the capital has not left: vector-focused CDMOs — Yinuo, PackGene, Jinfan — closed consecutive nine-figure-yuan rounds within a year. The old moat has become an entry ticket, and next-generation delivery vectors are the new scarcity story.
Mutual fund Q3 2026 filings are in: healthcare fund weighting in pharma rose to 10.3% (+3.6 points quarter-on-quarter), and medical R&D outsourcing was the standout — up 7.14 points in pharma funds and 11.75 points in non-pharma funds, the largest increase of any subsector, with WuXi AppTec ranking first on both value and fund count in both cohorts. Yet the sector's PE percentile has fallen from above 70% in September to about 45%, and guidance upgrades have not stuck in the share price. Positions and policy are now racing: 15 November, 7 December and 18 December will decide whether this crowded trade is confirmed.
Peptides, ADCs and CGT have been pitched as the 'second growth curve' of CDMO for three years. The 2026 Q3 reports hand the microphone back to the financials: WuXi's TIDES booked RMB 11.52bn in 9M, WuXi XDC posted RMB 3.70bn in H1 with orders +50-62%, while Hoyuan and Porton's CGT revenues together are under RMB 0.3bn and still loss-making. Who is booking real revenue, and who is still drawing on the whiteboard?
With the Q3 earnings season closed, the two pure-play global benchmarks - Samsung Biologics and Lonza - sit alongside China's four (WuXi AppTec, WuXi Biologics, Pharmaron, Asymchem). Three rulers - growth gap, real order flow, and the 232 tariff - show China's supply chain was not dismantled by the tariff.
Hidden in the Q3 reports is a harder signal than revenue - capital expenditure. Six CDMOs' 2026 capex totals over RMB 20 bn and is still climbing into 2027. This piece decodes what they are building, where the inflection lies, and the risks.
GenScript partnered with Lilly's AI drug-discovery collaboration platform Lilly TuneLab in September, providing wet-lab services — protein expression, purification and characterisation — to platform members. Its 30 October investor day revealed the numbers that matter: revenue from a single research site of a global top-20 pharma grew 5x year on year in H1, AIDD S2D (sequence-to-data) services rose from 23% to 64% of that client's revenue mix, and candidate molecules awaiting validation per round jumped from hundreds to 1,000-5,000. AI-native clients are not just adding orders — they are changing the pricing structure.
With Q3 earnings behind us, we shift the lens from 'who is making money' to 'which modalities are incubating the next wave of CDMO orders.' This piece takes stock—across peptides, gene editing, nucleic acids and bispecific/multispecific antibodies—of the dig-able trends, capacity levels and the hard data points we consider most important, with a CDMO-oriented cross-modality conclusion.
Peptides, ADCs and CGT have been pitched as the 'second growth curve' of CDMO for three years. The 2026 Q3 reports hand the microphone back to the financials: WuXi's TIDES booked RMB 11.52bn in 9M, WuXi XDC posted RMB 3.70bn in H1 with orders +50-62%, while Hoyuan and Porton's CGT revenues together are under RMB 0.3bn and still loss-making. Who is booking real revenue, and who is still drawing on the whiteboard?
ESMO 2026 runs 23-27 October in Madrid with roughly 30 Chinese studies among the late-breaking abstracts - about one third of the total and a record high. China holds five of the twelve Presidential Symposium slots, all Phase III: HutchMed's SAFFRON and Akeso's HARMONi-GI1 both hit PFS and OS, Hansoh's B7-H3 ADC ARTEMIS-011 delivered the first positive Phase III in osteosarcoma in a decade, Kelun-Biotech's TROP2 ADC TroFuse-005 met dual primary endpoints, while KeyMed/Lepu's CLDN18.2 ADC met OS but missed PFS.
On October 13, Zydus Lifesciences and Formycon announced FDA acceptance of the FYB206 BLA — a pembrolizumab (Keytruda) biosimilar and, to the companies' knowledge, the first publicly announced Keytruda biosimilar filing accepted in the US. Developed without a comparative Phase III efficacy trial under a February 2025 FDA agreement, FYB206 could see a decision by Q3 2027. Keytruda posted US$8.4B in Q2 2026 quarterly sales, putting the industry's largest patent cliff on the clock.