Before its official launch, Pfizer had already completed a series of internal business restructurings.

In 2019, Pfizer merged its consumer health business with GSK to form Haleon, and gradually sold off its stake in the following years to complete the spin-off. In 2020, Pfizer spun off mature products such as Lipitor and merged them with Mylan to form Viatris. The core logic behind these moves was clear: divest slow-growing legacy businesses to free up resources for innovation.

Subsequently, Pfizer’s collaboration with BioNTech became one of the most successful “blitzkrieg” deals in pharmaceutical history. This made Pfizer realize that “going it alone may no longer be the best approach in this era” — and the idea for the Ignite program was born.

In 2021, Pfizer appointed Aamir Malik as Executive Vice President and Chief Business Innovation Officer, reporting directly to CEO Albert Bourla. He was responsible for strategy, business development, portfolio management, R&D pipeline prioritization, new business formation, and advancing innovative access partnerships with payers and governments worldwide. Pfizer described him as a “partner for the next era of innovation.”

Around 2022, the Ignite program was officially launched.

Malik explained its vision:“Many exciting new scientific advances today are driven by early-stage biotech companies. We created Ignite to partner with these companies, energize their R&D at an early stage, and provide strategic advice and operational support — with no strings attached. If successful, this creates a three-way win: partners gain support, Pfizer gains innovative resources, and patients get new medicines faster.”

Kathy Fernando, Ignite’s first head, said the goal was to “scale such partnerships.”“Every biotech has its own expertise, but none has built full end-to-end capabilities. We provide supporting services to help them advance innovation, in return for a fee.”

She emphasized:“Our primary goal is not profit, but standing side-by-side with these companies through the inevitable ups and downs of R&D.”Pfizer believed this close collaboration would build strong partnerships — and nearly all of the first cohort of signed companies went on to pursue further collaborations with Pfizer.

Pfizer viewed Ignite as a source of pipeline innovation, aiming to select promising companies and help them succeed faster.“We shape innovation in ways that maximize benefit to patients,” Fernando said.

At launch, Pfizer held high expectations for Ignite. In 2023, it combined Ignite and PC1 (a contract development and manufacturing organization) under the Business Innovation division, placing it alongside Biopharma — Pfizer’s revenue-generating innovative biopharmaceutical core.

After a later organizational restructuring, Ignite and PC1 were split into separate units. Back then, boosted by Comirnaty and Paxlovid, Pfizer boasted strong cash flow and was the self-assured “world’s top pharma company.” Building an innovation ecosystem seemed only natural.

During its operation, Ignite announced more than 10 collaborations spanning oncology, rare diseases, inflammation, and immunology. Several programs reached Phase II clinical development.

For example:

• CellCentric (UK): In July 2023, Pfizer invested $25 million via Ignite to support the development of inobrodib, a first-in-class p300/CBP inhibitor, and assigned two R&D executives to its advisory board. In December 2025, CellCentric presented Phase II data at ASH showing that inobrodib plus pomalidomide and dexamethasone achieved an ORR of 60% at 20 mg and 75% at 30 mg in heavily pretreated, pomalidomide-resistant relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. A pivotal registration study is planned for 2026.

• Mediar Therapeutics: In October 2023, the fibrosis-focused biotech struck a strategic partnership with Pfizer Ignite for two anti-fibrotic candidates, MTX-463 and MTX-474, with Mediar retaining full decision rights. In June 2025, Mediar announced the first patient dosed in a Phase II trial of MTX-463 for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. MTX-474 has also entered Phase IIa.

• Acepodia: In September 2024, it entered a strategic clinical collaboration with Pfizer Ignite to develop therapies for autoimmune diseases. Acepodia’s Antibody Cell Conjugate (ACC) platform uses bioorthogonal chemistry to attach tumor-targeting antibodies to immune cells without genetic engineering, enabling scalable production and reduced side effects.ACE1831, an off-the-shelf CD20-targeting γδ2 T-cell therapy, was approved by China NMPA in December 2025 to initiate a Phase Ib/IIa trial for IgG4-related disease. The global trial plans to enroll ~30 patients in the U.S., Japan, and China, with completion expected in 2027.

Yet for a giant like Pfizer, these advances were barely meaningful.

Fernando once said Ignite was not primarily profit-driven — and after several years, its financial contribution remained minimal.

In 2025, Ignite generated only about $41 million in revenue for Pfizer, less than 1% of total revenue and nearly half of the previous year’s figure. More importantly, these early incubation projects were far from commercialization and could not ease Pfizer’s urgent financial pressure.

Ignite, once meant to “replicate the BioNTech miracle,” ultimately became a casualty of Pfizer’s resource prioritization.

Times have changed. Pfizer’s situation today is vastly different from the ambition that spawned Ignite.

In 2025, Pfizer’s total revenue was **$62.6 billion**, down 2% year-on-year — a sharp drop from its peak of over $100 billion in 2022. Excluding COVID products (Comirnaty and Paxlovid), core business revenue rose 6%.

However, Bourla admitted that Pfizer would enter a period of loss of exclusivity (LOE) in 2026.

Late last year, Pfizer guided 2026 revenue to $59.5–62.5 billion, a further decline from 2025.

Bourla stated:“All our efforts in fiscal 2026, 2027, and 2028 are aimed at keeping revenue at a reasonable level, ensuring a decline of no more than 3–4% in 2028 and less in other years. After this period, we expect industry-leading exponential revenue growth.”

The reality is that relying solely on slow internal growth would not come close to filling the massive gap from the patent cliff. Ignite’s incubation model was simply too slow for Pfizer. Thus, “buy, buy, buy” became the more direct solution.

• 2022: Pfizer acquired Biohaven for ~$11.6 billion to strengthen neuroscience and migraine, led by the CGRP antagonist rimegepant (Nurtec ODT/Vydura), which generated $1.424 billion in 2025 sales (+13%).
• 2023: It bought Seagen for **$43 billion**, gaining multiple key ADC pipelines including Adcetris, Padcev, and Tivdak. Padcev (targeting Nectin-4) reached $1.94 billion in 2025 sales (+22%).
• 2025: After a period of relative quiet, Pfizer outbid Novo Nordisk to acquire Metsera for $10 billion, securing MET-097i — an ultra-long-acting once-monthly GLP-1 RA — and an oral GLP-1 molecule, positioning itself for the future weight-loss market. MET-097i is already in Phase III.

Although costly, these large acquisitions quickly brought in late-stage or already commercialized assets — exactly what cash-rich but anxious Pfizer needed most.

Compared to Ignite’s slow incubation, large M&A rapidly fills revenue gaps from the patent cliff and delivers meaningful near-term sales. This explains why Pfizer chose to spend heavily on mature assets rather than wait for Ignite’s long-term growth.

Pfizer has not completely abandoned early research. It recently joined BaseLaunch, a Basel-based biotech incubator. Through strategic investment in BaseLaunch, Pfizer gains access to high-quality deal flow in Central Europe while providing drug development expertise to promising startups.But shifting from “building its own stage” to “borrowing a stage” represents a lighter-touch approach and reflects Pfizer’s reassessment of how to engage early innovation.

Pfizer’s struggles mirror those of most MNCs.

Over the past decade, the industry has been haunted by “Eroom’s Law” (Moore’s Law reversed). Deloitte reported that the ROI of R&D for big pharma fell from 10.1% in 2010 to just 1.2% in 2022.

Falling returns have made many MNCs more conservative in R&D spending. According to media statistics, about 60% of the world’s top 10 pharma companies reduced R&D investment year-on-year in 2025.

Behind this caution lies the looming patent cliff.

RBC Capital Markets estimates that big pharma will face roughly $400 billion in revenue losses from patent expirations over the next decade. Even after accounting for free cash flow to soften the decline, a gap of over $200 billion remains — to be filled by business development and M&A.

This widespread anxiety has reshaped MNC capital allocation. Certainty has become the top priority, with capital favoring late-stage assets with solid clinical data and clear regulatory paths.

A JPMorgan report noted that in 2025, big pharma paid higher upfronts for Phase III assets. For oncology, the median upfront for Phase II assets was ~$150 million in 2024–2025, while Phase III median upfront exceeded **$1 billion**.

There are exceptions — notably Eli Lilly, which is doubling down on early-stage research against the trend.

As early as 2002, Lilly founded Chorus, an R&D unit designed to operate “like a biotech company.”

A classic example is the migraine drug Emgality. Initially discovered internally, it was licensed to small biotech Arteaus Therapeutics in 2011. After strong Phase II data, Lilly bought back the rights in 2014.

Chorus was later upgraded to ExploR&D, with growing impact. By the end of 2025, Lilly had signed more than 90 partnerships with over 65 biotechs.

Thomas Hopkins, head of ExploR&D, explained that Lilly prefers to intervene before its partners make mistakes — such as whether target selection is rational, CMC strategies realistic, and clinical endpoints meaningful for regulators and commercial success. These technical decisions often determine a startup’s fate for 3–5 years.

Lilly recently announced a **$500 million investment in South Korea**, including plans to build an incubator for local innovative firms. Similarly, Roche has invested ~$484 million in South Korea’s biopharma industry to build a global clinical trial ecosystem and nurture local talent.

According to Fortune Business Insights, South Korea’s pharmaceutical market is projected to grow from $27 billion in 2024 to $53.97 billion by 2032.Against this backdrop, MNCs are using incubators and partnership networks to lock in early-stage innovative resources worldwide for the next decade — much as they did in China years ago.

The shutdown of Pfizer Ignite is a footnote in this round of industry evolution.

MNC strategies toward early research are never static. They shift between internal R&D and external licensing, betting on late-stage assets vs. investing early, searching for the path best suited to the current environment.

But through all these shifts, one truth remains clear:Innovation never disappears. It only flows to those who can identify it, support it, and amplify its value — whether through internal capabilities or external collaboration.