Some disease areas bucked the trend of shrinking pipelines, however, with immune and cardiovascular indications seeing an upward trend in investigational assets.
The number of investigational biopharma R&D assets—an indicator of how well the industry’s innovation engine is working—has fallen for the first time since the mid-1990s.
At the start of 2026, there were 22,940 drug candidates in development, a 3.92% decrease from that same reference point in 2025, when there were 23,875 investigational molecules in the pipeline, according to Citeline’s annual Pharma R&D report.
Nevertheless, Citeline in its report cautioned that an internal adjustment in how it tallied pipeline projects could have contributed to this dip. Taking these changes into account, the firm said that “in reality, the overall pipeline size has probably been fairly flat over the past few years.”
And even if the total number of drugs in development did drop, Citeline doesn’t appear overly concerned about what that could mean for the industry’s future. “As long as the industry is still producing the goods, there’s nothing to worry about here,” the firm wrote. “A smaller overall pipeline doesn’t necessarily mean pharma is barking up the wrong tree.”
Still, Citeline’s drug count hints at a contraction of the pipeline. Across almost all therapeutic areas, there were fewer investigational assets in 2026. This includes oncology and rare diseases, which typically account for the vast majority of drug candidates. Cancer programs dropped from 9,476 in 2025 to 9,036 in 2026, while the rare disease pipeline shrunk from 7,721 to 7,618.
Some indications bucked this trend, however. Immunology, for instance, saw a notable spike in the number of drugs in development, as did the respective pipelines of cardiovascular diseases and blood and clotting disorders.
There are other encouraging signals in the Citeline report, too. The firm noted that while the overall number of drugs in development decreased, the number of companies with active programs grew from 6,823 in 2025 to 7,057 in 2026. Similarly, the size of Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 pipelines, as well as the total amount of drugs launched, had increased by the start of the year.
The dip in the overall pipeline size, according to Citeline’s data, was driven by a sharp drop in the number of preclinical assets.
Aside from the total size of pharma’s pipeline, Citeline also looked at who was responsible for most of the drugs in development. Roche came out on top with 262 active assets, while last year’s top-placer, Pfizer, dropped to third with 257 programs. AstraZeneca, meanwhile, shot up to second with 261.
Of note, Citeline pointed to what it called the “strong Asian flavor” in the 2026 leaderboards, with three Chinese companies—Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, Sino Biopharmaceutical and CSPC Pharmaceutical—and four Japanese firms—Takeda, Otsuka Holdings, Astellas Pharma and Daiichi Sankyo—landing in its top 25.
In fact, when looking at the number of times a drugmaker is attached to a drug candidate, but excluding molecules that are not actually in development, Jiangsu Hengrui shot up to seventh place on Citeline’s tally, with 177 active assets. This is higher than some of the biggest pharma companies such as Merck, AbbVie, Bristol Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson.
