ADC drugs are undoubtedly the focus of many pharmaceutical companies competing for layout in 2020, reaching $40 billion deal in less than a year. AstraZeneca built a partnership with the Daiichi Sankyo Company Limited for its HER2 and Trop2 target ADC drugs for $13 billion. Gilead Sciences spent $21 billion to acquire Immunomedics’s Trop2 targeted ADC drugs. Merck agreed a $4.2 billion partnership with Seattle Genetics’s LIV-1-targeted ADC drug and later acquired VelosBio’s ROR1-targeted ADC drug for $2.8 billion. Recently, Boehringer Ingelheim acquired the ROR1 targeted ADC drugs of NBE-Therapeutics with $1.43 billion.
Global ADC drug blockbuster trade in 2020
| R&D Company | ADC Project | Buyer | Transaction volume |
| Daiichi Sankyo Company Limited | DS-8201 (HER2) | AstraZeneca | $1.35 billion advance + $5.55 billion milestone |
| Daiichi Sankyo Company Limited | DS-1062 (Trop2) | AstraZeneca | $1 billion advance + $1 billion registration milestone + $4 billion sales milestone |
| Daiichi Sankyo Company Limited | U3-1402 (HER3 ) | AstraZeneca | Oxitinib combined therapy |
| Immunomedics | Trodelvy (Trop2) | Gilead Sciences | $21 billion acquisition |
| Seattle Genetics | LadiratuzumabVedotin (LIV-1 ) | Merck | $600 million advance + $1 billion equity investment + $2.6 billion milestone |
| VelosBio | VLS101 (ROR1 ) | Merck | $2.8 billion acquisition |
| NBE-Therapeutics | ROR1 | Boehringer Ingelheim | $1.43 billion acquisition |