This is the closing chapter of our ASCO 2026 series. Across nine deep-dives — bispecifics, ADCs, China, SCLC, breast, lung, GI, and diagnostics — a single thesis kept reappearing. Here we make it explicit, and turn it into a playbook for the three desks that pay for commercial intelligence.
The whole meeting in one chart
If you strip ASCO 2026 down to its most important commercial signal, it is a modality rotation. Plot the two-year change in study volume for every major drug class and the direction is unambiguous.
Engineered antibodies are the future of the field's research dollar: bispecifics added 79 studies and ADCs added 43 over two years. Every legacy class — checkpoint inhibitors, CDK4/6, PARP, AKT/PI3K, KRAS — is flat or shrinking. This is not a statement about which biology is "good"; the declining classes include some of the most important drugs in oncology. It is a statement about where new development capital, competitive attention, and therefore future readouts and deals are concentrating.
The four findings that matter most
- The modality rotation (above). ADCs and bispecifics are where the field is heading; mature small-molecule and first-generation IO classes are consolidating. Implication: re-weight pipelines and in-licensing toward engineered antibodies.
- China has arrived as an originator. Ivonescimab's HARMONi-6 became the first China-discovered drug in an ASCO Plenary in 61 years, and a dozen Chinese agents carry double-digit study counts. Implication: the next wave of cross-border deals runs through Chinese biotech.
- The diagnostics layer is now a headline act. ctDNA (112), MRD (37), and real-world evidence (780) rival drug classes for share of voice, with diagnostics companies running their own programs. Implication: companion diagnostics and MRD strategy are strategic, not procurement.
- Biomarker-defined markets keep splitting. HER2-low/ultralow, DLL3, FRα, claudin-18.2, PIK3CA — each redefinition creates a new addressable population. Implication: precision niches are where differentiation still lives in crowded tumors.
The forward pipeline: what's still cooking
Study momentum tells you where the field is; the trials-in-progress (TPS) studies tell you where it is going. ASCO 2026 carried 145 trials-in-progress presentations, concentrated in the indications with the most white space: advanced solid tumors (11), ovarian (11), colorectal (9), gastric (8), and breast (7). And the meeting referenced roughly 1,644 distinct registered trials (1,588 studies carry an NCT identifier) — a machine-readable map of the active clinical-development frontier that the radar links directly to ClinicalTrials.gov.
The playbook, by desk
| Desk | What ASCO 2026 says | Which Knitify radar answers it |
|---|---|---|
| Business development | In-license ADCs & bispecifics; source from China biotech; target biomarker-defined niches | ASCO Radar → Licensee Finder → Asset Hunt |
| R&D / corporate strategy | Avoid crowded mature classes (CDK4/6, PARP, KRAS); build in expanding modalities | ASCO Radar → Target Crowding → Competitive Intel |
| Investors | Track study momentum as a leading indicator of readouts, approvals & deals | ASCO Radar → Emerging Biotechs → Patent / Biosimilar Cliff |
| Diagnostics | ctDNA/MRD is a primary battleground; win the adjuvant-decision evidence race | ASCO Radar → diagnostics-sponsor view |
The throughline is the Knitify thesis: from molecule to market, every answer points to a commercial outcome. A meeting of 7,222 studies is not a literature problem — it is a positioning map. The job of the radar is to turn the raw program into the four or five decisions each desk actually has to make: what to license, what to build, what to back, and what to measure.
How we built this series
Every number across these ten articles is a structured aggregation over the Knitify ASCO Radar — the
conference-studies index covering 7,222 ASCO 2026 studies, 6,511 from 2025, and 5,885 from
2024. We measured research attention (study counts by drug, indication, modality, and year), not clinical
efficacy. Named trial results came from public company press releases, the ASCO press program, and
peer-reviewed journals — cited in each article. No copyrighted study text was reproduced; the radar links
out to the official ASCO program for the underlying data.
Explore the underlying data
Every number above is live and pivotable on the Knitify ASCO Radar — analyze the 7,222 studies in the ASCO 2026 program by drug, indication, sponsor, or trial-in-progress status, and compare year over year against 2025 and 2024. The radar links to each study on the official ASCO program; it does not reproduce copyrighted text.
Methodology & scope: figures in this article are structured signals the Knitify ASCO Radar derives from the publicly released ASCO 2026 scientific program (7,222 studies presented; 6,511 in 2025; 5,885 in 2024) — counting how many studies reference a given drug, indication, or modality class. They quantify research attention and momentum, not clinical efficacy or market share. Named trial results are quoted from public company press releases, the ASCO press program, and peer-reviewed journals (cited below). The radar does not reproduce any copyrighted text — it links to each study on the official ASCO program. This is editorial commentary on public data — not investment, legal, regulatory, or medical advice.