抗体薬物複合体（ADC）は、2026年のバイオ医薬品業界におけるM&Aブームの中でも引き続き強い関心を集めています。バイオ医薬品業界におけるグローバル・スタンダードなコンセンサス売上予測を提供する「Evaluate Pharma」によると、ADC市場全体は2032年までに570億ドル規模に達する見込みです。
Antibody drug conjugates, they’re still red hot. In April, we saw Gilead pay over three billion for Tubulis in Germany. We saw Lilly pay several hundred million dollars for CrossBridge Bio. And of course late last year, that mega deal from Novartis paying $12 billion for Avidity. Evaluate’s forecasting that ADC sales collectively are going to reach over $57 billion by 2032. The attraction, of course, that this is a well-validated modality. There are a dozen or so ADCs already on the market in the US, but there’s also loads of room for improvement and loads of ways to improve ADCs. You can change the target, you can change the payload and/or you can change the conjugation technology that binds the parts together. So most of the ADCs on the market today use actually one of two types of cytotoxic drugs, the topoisomerase or the tubulin inhibitors. And that’s leading to some real problems with drug resistance.
So there are really urgent need on the payload front. But you also, in order to have new payloads, you need to be able to hook them on safely and effectively. So that’s where companies like Tubulis, their forte is in conjugation technology. CrossBridge Bio, similarly, they have a stable linker technology that they hope might allow multiple payloads to be hooked on. And there are already several dual payload ADCs in the clinic.
So in Avidity’s case, that’s interesting. They’re using RNA-based drugs as payloads and they call these antibody oligonucleotide conjugates. So they’re the ones Novartis has just bought. And these are being developed not for cancer, but for rare neuromuscular diseases. So we’re seeing indication expansion beyond cancer as well. Other companies are trying to hit more than one target with their ADC. So you may remember Takeda’s giant licensing deal last year with Innovent that featured a bispecific ADC hitting both EGFR and B7H3.And that’s just one example of many.
The permutations are almost endless. Companies are attaching degraders, radioligands, immunotherapies to their antibody conjugates and there are obviously many multi-specific ADCs in the pipeline. Of course, the whole lot can be combined with other kinds of medicines like checkpoint inhibitors.
There’ll be more deals to come.
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ADCの取引動向は、「商業的な実績の裏付け」と「設計の柔軟性」という2つの要素のバランスを反映しています。すでに米国では10種以上のADCが承認されており、その有効性と市場性が実証されています。一方で、開発企業は標的の選定、ペイロードの設計、あるいは結合（コンジュゲーション）技術の工夫によって差別化を図る余地が依然として大きく残されています。
最近の買収動向を見ると、特に薬物結合技術やリンカー技術に対する強い関心がうかがえます。これらのプラットフォームは、ペイロードをより安全に送達することを可能にし、新たな種類のペイロードの活用を広げるとともに、デュアルペイロードADCのような、より高度で複雑な設計を実現します。
現在上市されているADCの多くは、主に「トポイソメラーゼ阻害剤」と「チューブリン阻害剤」という2つのペイロードに依存しています。こうした偏りは、特にADCがより早期の治療段階で使用されるようになるにつれて、耐性の問題や安全性に関する課題を引き起こしています。
