AbbVie’s RemeGen Bet Highlights a Shift in Cancer Strategy

AbbVie’s RC148 deal with RemeGen reflects a broader push to combine ADCs with complementary drugs for longer lasting cancer responses

24 Jan 2026

In January AbbVie, an American drugmaker, struck a licensing and co-development deal with RemeGen, a Chinese biotech. The focus is RC148, a bispecific antibody that targets both PD-1, an immune checkpoint, and VEGF, which drives blood-vessel growth in tumours. It is being tested in solid cancers such as lung and colorectal disease.

RC148 is not an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), the fast-growing class of treatments that deliver toxic payloads directly to cancer cells. Yet the deal fits AbbVie’s wider effort to build an oncology portfolio in which different tools can be mixed and matched. As ADCs move into later trials and routine use, their limits are becoming clearer. Side-effects, resistance and fierce competition have pushed firms to look beyond single drugs.

One answer is combination therapy. ADCs are good at killing tumour cells, but less adept at reshaping the environment around them. Drugs like RC148 may help. By dampening immune brakes while starving tumours of blood supply, bispecific antibodies could make cancers more vulnerable to targeted attacks. Early studies across the industry hint that some pairings deepen responses, though most data remain preliminary.

For RemeGen the partnership offers something else: a route into the American market. Regulatory hurdles and marketing costs there are steep, especially for smaller firms. The deal includes an upfront payment and the promise of future milestones, a sign that large drugmakers are still willing to back assets that stand out, even as biotech funding has cooled.

The agreement does not mark a sharp change in strategy. Rather, it reflects a steady shift. Big pharmaceutical firms are assembling broader cancer portfolios, designed for flexibility. Testing combinations earlier may spread risk, speed development and improve the odds that a drug fits into future standards of care.

Breakthroughs still matter. But as the AbbVie - RemeGen deal suggests, progress in cancer treatment may increasingly come from careful pairing and patient accumulation of evidence, rather than from bold leaps alone.