Beijing, June 12, 2026 - The Bayer R&D Open Day event was recently held at the Bayer E-town Open Innovation Center. With “openness and collaboration” as the theme, the event served as a platform for communication between Bayer’s global R&D system and China’s innovation ecosystem, jointly exploring the future development and collaboration opportunities in pharmaceutical innovation.
Bayer shared its global research and development (R&D) strategy for its pharmaceutical business. Bayer Pharmaceutical business will focus on areas with highest impact and value potential, aiming to deliver breakthrough innovation through prioritization of quality, productivity and a unique ecosystem. Based on collaborations with Chinese partners in drug discovery and clinical translation, China will be an intergral part of this strategy.
“We’ve seen a tremondous progress in China that has been made to become a true leader of lifescience and biomedical research. We look forward to breakthrough innovation coming from China,” said Dr. Christian Rommel, Executive Vice President, Global Head of Research and Development and Member of the Pharmaceuticals Leadership Team at Bayer Pharmaceuticals. “There is a huge potential of innovation opportunity in China. Leveraging our openness and collaboration, Bayer hopes to keep this momentum to a very new level in China.”
“In the biopharmaceuticals area, the quality and efficiency of Chinese innovation are remarkable,” said Xiaolan Zhou, Executive Vice President, Pharmaceuticals Division, Bayer AG, President of Bayer Pharmaceuticals China, President of Bayer Group Greater China. “As a company that has been deeply rooted in China for over 140 years, we fully understand the importance of upgrading China from a ‘market’ to a ‘co-creation partner’ and jointly empowering globally. We hope to integrate into ‘Healthy China’ with global standards and benefit more patients through win-win collaboration – this is Bayer’s long-term commitment to the Chinese market. We look forward to continuously driving strategic evolution, from accelerating accessibility to deepening local presence and connecting globally.”
Amid the “Bayer R&D Open Day”, Bayer and Tsinghua University launched a regulatory scienceprogram , aiming to promote deep integration across disciplines and fields. By systematically reviewing the key experiences and challenges in China’s innovative medicine R&D and review practices, and benchmarking against mainstream international regulatory systems, it will extract a regulatory science methodology framework with universal significance, and ultimately formulate actionable policy recommendations.
During the event, the global and Chinese management teams of Bayer in R&D, external collaboration, and other areas, together with industry experts, research institutes, startups, and other partners, discussed core issues such as advancing clinical needs, practical effects of policies, evolution of collaboration models, and integration of local innovation into the global system, hoping to promote collaborative development of pharmaceutical innovation.
In recent years, Bayer has sharpened its focus in R&D to build a highly differentiated pipeline for long-term growth in oncology, cardiovascular and renal diseases, neurology and rare diseases, and immunology. As of now, Bayer’s pharmaceutical business have been approved for marketing in China for 20 innovative drugs, totaling 40 new drugs or new indications. At the same time, Bayer regards China as a core strategic market and important partner for global pharmaceutical innovation, continuously building an ecosystem that fosters collaborations among industry, academia, research institutions, entrepreneurs and investment organizations.
About Bayer
Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the life science fields of health care and nutrition. In line with its mission, “Health for all, Hunger for none,” the company’s products and services are designed to help people and the planet thrive by supporting efforts to master the major challenges presented by a growing and aging global population. Bayer is committed to driving sustainable development and generating a positive impact with its businesses. At the same time, the Group aims to increase its earning power and create value through innovation and growth. The Bayer brand stands for trust, reliability and quality throughout the world. In fiscal 2025, the Group employed around 88,000 people and had sales of 45.6 billion euros. R&D expenses amounted to 5.8 billion euros. For more information, go to www.bayer.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Bayer’s public reports which are available on the Bayer website at www.bayer.com. The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.
Bayer AG is a holding company with operating subsidiaries worldwide. References to “Bayer” or “the company” herein may refer to one or more subsidiaries as context requires.
