As other Big Pharmas face local headwinds, Pfizer doubles down on China commitment with Zai Lab antimicrobial marketing pact

For Big Pharma, recent headlines out of China suggest multinational drugmakers are facing their share of challenges in the country. But that's not discouraging Pfizer.

After pledging to invest more $1 billion in the country and strengthen ties to local biotechs earlier this month, the New York pharma giant is lining up another local deal of a different stripe.

Pfizer has been tapped by Shanghai-based Zai Lab to help market the company’s antibacterial drug Xacduro in mainland China, the partners said Thursday. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, which is slated to run through November 2028.

Xacduro first won approval in the U.S. to treat hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia in early 2023. The drug subsequently picked up a nod in the same indication in China this past May.

The drug, which weds the beta lactam antibiotic sulbactam with the broad-spectrum beta lactamase inhibitor durlobactam, specifically targets the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii, which can cause infections in the blood, urinary tract and lungs.

Xacduro was developed by AstraZeneca spinout Entasis, which was itself acquired by Innoviva for $113 million in 2022. Under a previous deal with Entasis, Zai Lab, now enlisting Pfizer’s help, holds the exclusive license to develop and market Xacduro in multiple Asian countries like China, Korea, Vietnam and Malaysia, as well as Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Zai Lab and Pfizer argue there’s an urgent need for antimicrobials like Xacduro that target the largely drug-resistant bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii. The Centers for Disease Control and prevention has flagged carbapenem-resistant microorganisms as an urgent threat, while Acinetobacter baumannii itself was ranked as a top priority among the World Health Organization’s list of bacterial priority pathogens in 2024, the partners said in their release.

In China specifically, Acinetobacter baumannii was the leading cause of death linked to antimicrobial resistance in 2019, Zai Lab and Pfizer added, citing a recent global burden of disease study.

“According to recent surveillance data from China, resistance of Acinetobacter baumannii to the carbapenem class of antibiotics has reached approximately 74%,” Josh Smiley, Zai Lab’s CEO, said in a statement. “By joining forces with Pfizer, we seek to bring this innovative treatment to Chinese patients more quickly, saving the lives of those most at risk.”

Pfizer’s team-up with Zai Lab comes at a somewhat tumultuous time for several other large drugmakers operating in China.

Earlier this month, the stock price of British drugmaker AstraZeneca dipped after a report from Chinese business news outlet Yicai fueled fears of a potentially escalating insurance fraud investigation in the country.

AstraZeneca, for its part, attempted to dispel speculation about the insurance fraud imbroglio, telling other news outlets it believed Chinese authorities were looking into whether the company’s employees illegally imported the antibody-drug conjugate Enhertu and the cancer immunotherapy Imjudo from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland.

AZ helmsman Pascal Soriot recently defended his company’s oversight in China during a third-quarter earnings call, noting that its operations there have “strong [compliance] policies in place.”

The “recent lack of compliance moved outside of these systems,” Soriot said at the time. He stressed that AZ would fully cooperate with Chinese authorities in their investigations.

Separately, it came to light earlier this week that Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co. are cutting local jobs after encountering headwinds in the country.

J&J’s layoffs, which are expected to affect staffers “across multiple divisions,” form part of a restructuring of the company’s China business, according to a report from Yicai Global. Bloomberg, for its part, reported that the cuts will primarily hit a division that sells surgical products.

The cuts are part of “recently implemented organizational changes to optimize our business operations,” a J&J spokesperson told Fierce Pharma.

Merck’s layoffs are slated to primarily impact the company’s China diabetes group, which sells the drugs Janumet, Januvia and Steglatro in the country. Sales of that trio are declining worldwide in the face of competition from generics in certain markets.

“We launched a new operating model of the diabetes business to drive customer-centric decisions agilely, maximize the portfolio value, and help more diabetes patients reduce disease burden, and improve their quality of life,” a Merck spokesperson said earlier this week.

Still, Pfizer appears undeterred by the pressures facing its compatriots in China.

Earlier this month, the company’s China president, Jean-Chistrophe Pointeau, told reporters at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai that the drugmaker plans to invest $1 billion in the country from 2025 to 2030. The cash will help hasten the arrival of new drugs, improve diagnostic capabilities and support local biotechs through collaborations.

In a show of good faith, Pfizer has already inked a memorandum of understanding with local firm Mabworks and the CRO Kyinno Bio to develop new drugs for multiple myeloma.