The industry has learned how the ball bounces—now it must decide where to play next.
While 2025 was dedicated to “understanding a little bit more about the rules of this game that we’re playing,” 2026 is all about being active players in the new game, McKinsey senior partner Greg Graves said during a panel focused on changing policies held Jan. 13 at Fierce JPM Week.
Last year, the Trump administration’s repeated tariff threats and Most Favored Nation pricing demands put biopharma leaders on notice. While the industry now understands the “first bounce of the ball,” like the impact of tariffs, what interests Graves the most is the next bounce—and the one after that.
“Let’s assume that, hey, maybe we’re not launching [in] Europe as quickly as we used to and we’re going to wait for that price in the U.S. to kind of get a little closer to what the European price would be before we launch,” Graves said, asking, “Does that create an opportunity for China to kind of validate itself as a Western player?”
For Graves, 2026 will be defined by playing under these new rules and considering what these factors will mean for the industry in the years to come.
For Takeda’s Andrew Robertson, using the longer-term lens means the discussions have shifted to consider a “more upstream” and global perspective.
“Where is the infrastructure going to be?” said Robertson, who serves as Takeda’s VP and head of global regulatory policy and innovation. “How do we actually accelerate development?”
“We’re looking for where our strengths are, but the innovation really can come from anywhere,” he explained.
Of all biopharma innovation sources, China was definitely the belle of the ball in 2025. And the nation won’t be leaving the dance anytime soon, ING Bank’s global healthcare lead Stephen Farrelly said during the panel discussion.
“A third of new innovation therapies come from China, which is an astonishing pace of growth,” Farrelly explained, noting that as the country becomes more well-established, eyes naturally turn to look at Europe.
“There’s a very good reason why the Trump administration and the industry have gone after Europe to pay more and has not gone after China, and that’s because Europe is weak in this conversation—there’s no two ways about it,” Farrelly said.
“They’ve underinvested, certainly, over the past 10-15 years,” he continued. “The Biotech Act that came out in the last couple of months took seven years. What we’re talking about here took seven months, right?”
While Farrelly believes Europe still has a long way to go when it comes to biopharma, he highlighted the United Kingdom as the “canary in the coal mine,” singling the nation out as an outlier and example for what deals should be modeled after.
In recent months, U.K. officials have agreed to lower rebate rates paid by drug companies and to spend more on innovative medicines.
“The EU needs to follow suit and ultimately pay more for those innovative therapies, which they’re at risk of losing access to,” he said.
Which ties in with Genentech’s Fritz Bittenbender’s main point: every country wants three things—more manufacturing, increased R&D and access to innovative medicines at low prices.
“And the conversation we’re having with the Trump administration—those three things don’t work together,” the Genentech SVP and head of public affairs and access said.
“You can’t do more investment in manufacturing, and you can’t do more investment in R&D, and you can’t sell your medicines for less, like that equation just doesn’t work right because all those investments are tied to revenue,” he explained. “So, this is the interesting conversation we’re having around the world right now.”
As it relates to China and small U.S. biotechs, the pressing goal is learning how to compete, explained Bittenbender, who chairs the U.S. biotech industry’s largest advocacy organization, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO).
“We need to keep up with the science. We need to keep making those investments,” he said.
Conversely, legislation aimed at limiting the impact of China’s innovation coming into the U.S. is “just going to hurt patients,” Bittenbender said. “If you have an incredible medicine that was developed in China or was developed in France or was developed in Great Britain, it’s going to impact patients’ lives. You want to get that medicine to patients.”
That’s why BIO is focusing on ways to bolster the U.S.’s ability to compete, Bittenbender explained, which will require a strong regulatory environment and continued investments into the life sciences.
By Gabrielle Masson
Source: fiercebiotech.com
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