The Conference Where China Stopped Following and Started Leading

A Plenary First That Says Everything

For decades, ASCO's plenary session has been oncology's biggest stage. Four slots. Four presentations that the global cancer community treats like gospel. This year, one of those four came from a trial run entirely in China, featuring a drug invented by a Chinese biotech.

That has never happened before. And it tells you more about where oncology is heading than any analyst report ever could.

ASCO 2026, held in early June, wasn't just another conference for China's biotech sector. It was the year Chinese companies stopped being interesting footnotes and became main characters. Across antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs, which are basically guided missiles that deliver chemo directly to tumors), bispecific antibodies (proteins engineered to grab two targets at once), and cell therapies, Chinese-origin assets didn't just show up. They showed out.

The Drug That Stole the Show

The plenary slot went to ivonescimab, a bispecific antibody made by Zhuhai-based Akeso. It blocks both PD-1 (a checkpoint that tumors exploit to hide from the immune system) and VEGF (a protein that feeds tumors new blood vessels). Think of it as cutting off a castle's disguise and its supply lines simultaneously.

The Phase 3 trial, called HARMONi-6, tested ivonescimab plus chemo against another PD-1 inhibitor plus chemo in first-line squamous lung cancer patients. The results were striking: response rates hit 75.9%, progression-free survival improved by roughly 40%, and the risk of death dropped by 34%. Median overall survival reached 27.9 months versus 23.7 months for the comparator arm.

What makes this particularly spicy? Ivonescimab's ex-China rights belong to Summit Therapeutics, a small U.S.-listed company that's now sitting on what could be the first real challenger to Merck's Keytruda in first-line lung cancer. A global confirmatory trial (Harmoni-3) is already underway. If it replicates these numbers, the implications are enormous.

Meanwhile, BioNTech and BMS showed Phase 2 data for their own PD-L1/VEGF bispecific, pumitamig, at the same meeting. The Chinese drug is setting the bar, and the Western competitor is playing catch-up.