Every November, the same ritual plays out in a European convention hall. University technology-transfer offices arrive with slides counting patents filed, invention disclosures logged and startups formed. This year BIO-Europe runs from 9 to 11 November at Koelnmesse in Cologne, with digital partnering following on 17 and 18 November, and the Asia-Pacific delegations are bigger than ever.

Those slides measure activity, not conversion. A patent that never leaves the shelf is a cost centre. The question a licensing executive actually asks across the table is simpler: when this institution's science leaves campus, does anyone pay for it, and how much?

The question matters more now because Asia-Pacific has become the place where pharma shops. Chinese drugmakers alone signed 157 out-licensing deals worth US$135.7 billion in 2025, up from 94 deals worth US$51.9 billion a year earlier, according to regulator data reported by the South China Morning Post. GlobalData counted US$7.86 billion of Korean innovator licensing value in the first seven months of 2025. Almost all of those headlines name companies. The universities and institutes whose science sits underneath them are usually invisible.

This list tries to make them visible. It counts disclosed licences of drug assets and disclosed spinout financings, not patent families, and it says plainly where an institution's silence kept it out.

How the list was built

Inclusion. An institution qualifies if it is traceable as the IP origin of a drug asset (small molecule, biologic, oligonucleotide, vaccine or cell therapy) licensed between 1 January 2024 and 10 November 2026, either directly to a company or onward from its own spinout to a pharma partner; or as the origin of a spinout that disclosed a financing round or exit in the same window.

• The asset or founding technology must be credited to the institution by the institution, the licensor or the licensee. Onward deals by spinouts count to the parent only where the parent states the asset came from its research.
• Co-origin. Where several institutions co-founded a company, credit goes to the one named as the source of the lead programme, and the others are listed in the entry.
• Research collaborations, memoranda of understanding, option-to-research pacts, grants, diagnostics, devices, process know-how and platform-only deals do not count on their own.
• Institutions are ordered by the largest disclosed figure attached to any qualifying event: upfront payment, total deal value, round size or the acquisition price of a licensee. Where nothing is disclosed, they follow by number of qualifying events. Figures appear in the currency of the source; nothing has been converted unless the source did it.
• Native-language check. Chinese, Japanese and Korean primary sources were read in the original. That check changed two numbers: an English wire's JPY 8.5 billion round for a Kyoto spinout is JPY 850 million in the Japanese release, and the lead investor of a Taiwanese A*STAR licensee differs between English and Chinese accounts.
• Absences are recorded, not padded. Institutions that were checked and did not qualify are named at the end, with the reason.

The ten

1. The University of Queensland (Australia)

Queensland sits at the top because it shows the full arc that every tech-transfer office pitches and few complete. The Molecular Clamp, invented by Keith Chappell, Daniel Watterson and Paul Young, stabilises viral surface proteins in their prefusion shape. UniQuest licensed it to Vicebio, a company Medicxi built around the platform, and kept equity. When Sanofi agreed to buy Vicebio for its bivalent RSV and hMPV vaccine VXB-241, then in exploratory Phase 1, the university described it as the largest deal ever involving a company commercialising Australian university IP.

What keeps Queensland from being a one-deal story is what happened next. In June 2026 UniQuest granted an exclusive licence for QED-203 to the Ellison Medical Institute, and the asset came out of QEDDI, the in-house medicinal chemistry group that UQ and the Queensland government seeded so that academic hits would reach a licensable candidate stage before anyone asked a pharma company to pay. That is the lesson for partnering teams in Cologne: Queensland does not sell disclosures; it sells molecules with a development package attached.

2. KAIST (South Korea)

KAIST qualifies on a single deal, but it is the cleanest example in the region of basic science turning into a priced asset. Lee Jeong-ho's laboratory showed, in papers published in Nature in 2015 and Nature Medicine in 2018, that some intractable epilepsies are driven by acquired mutations in brain stem cells rather than inherited ones. Sovargen then built an antisense programme that hits the mutated MTOR pathway directly.

Korean reporting credits the turn to commercial traction to the arrival of Park Cheol-won, a former LG drug developer with global licensing experience, as co-chief executive in 2023. The Korean-language coverage also adds a timeline the English press releases omit: Sovargen is targeting global clinical entry for SVG105 in 2027. For a licensee, that is the real question behind a US$550 million headline.

3. Korea Institute of Science and Technology, KIST (South Korea)

KIST researchers led by Park Ki-duk had worked on CV-01 since 2014. The compound entered Phase 1 in Korea in September 2024 and was optioned to Angelini a month later, with Angelini taking the lead on development. Korean trade reporting since then says the Italian company is running a European Phase 1b in Alzheimer's disease, while Cureverse continues its domestic Phase 1 at Seoul National University Hospital.

The pairing of entries two and three is the most interesting pattern on this list. Angelini, a privately owned mid-size European company building a brain health franchise, bought into two Korean institutional assets in eleven months, both in neurology, both before proof of concept. That is a buyer profile academic offices in Asia should be studying: not big pharma, but focused specialists willing to take early CNS risk in exchange for ex-Asia rights.

4. ShanghaiTech University (China)

ShanghaiTech is the only mainland Chinese institution on this list, and the reason is disclosure rather than science. China's companies signed 157 out-licensing deals worth US$135.7 billion in 2025, according to regulator figures reported by the South China Morning Post, but the academic origin of those assets is rarely traceable in English or Chinese filings. ShanghaiTech is an exception because it publishes deal values for its own transfers.

Its track record also predates the window. An anti-schizophrenia candidate, SPH9788, was licensed to Shanghai Pharmaceuticals by ShanghaiTech and the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science around the end of 2021. A Ministry of Education case listing puts the contract at RMB 100 million, with RMB 5 million upfront and the rest in milestones, and the candidate started Phase 1 in March 2025. It is not counted here, but it explains why partners return.

5. Monash University (Australia)

Monash earns its place on a single, well-documented round. Professor Merlin Thomas's RAGE biology and the company's splice-switching chemistry produced RB042, and the A$29 million Series A was sized to take it into the clinic. BioWorld reported in January 2026 that Phase 1 had begun, roughly two months after the money closed, which is fast by any academic spinout standard.

The detail worth noting is who wrote the cheque. Hostplus is a superannuation fund, and its presence alongside IP Group Australia shows how Australian institutions are pulling domestic pension money into early biotech. Monash also appears as a partner in the consortium behind WEHI's Ternarx (entry nine), and in September 2025 signed a memorandum with Korea's K-Bio Lab Hub to give Korean startups a Melbourne base.

6. The University of Tokyo (Japan)

Tokyo ranks on companies, not licences. Celaid is built on Professor Satoshi Yamazaki's method for selectively expanding haematopoietic stem cells outside the body, and its lead product, CLD-001, aims to supply best-matched, bone-marrow-engrafting stem cells for transplant. The Series B is earmarked for advancing towards US clinical trials, and Osaka University Venture Capital joining UTEC in the round shows Japanese university funds now co-investing across campuses.

The Japanese-language release behind the TIME TRAVELER figure matters for accuracy. The company was set up in January 2024 on research by Professor Tetsu Akiyama, and the round is small. That is the honest picture of Japanese academic drug creation: enormous company formation, modest cheques, and very few out-licences priced in public.

7. Kyoto University (Japan)

Link Therapeutics grew out of a finding by Masahiro Shiokawa's group in Kyoto's gastroenterology department that patients with ulcerative colitis carry autoantibodies against integrin alpha-v beta-6. The company is turning that into therapies that target pathogenic autoantibodies, and its Series B pulled in a trading house venture arm and two megabank funds alongside the university.

Kyoto iCAP is the engine behind the entry. Global University Venturing reports that nine companies co-created by the fund carry market capitalisations of at least JPY 10 billion, including the oncology developer Chordia Therapeutics. The Ciconia agreement suggests Kyoto is now trying to industrialise that process for drug discovery specifically, by inviting a venture builder to assess its pipeline of seeds before they are spun out.

8. A*STAR (Singapore)

A*STAR's two licences sit behind a programme that is moving. HoneyBear says its lead antibody-radionuclide conjugate, HB001, is in late preclinical work with an IND filing targeted for the end of 2026, and its Series A brought total funding to US$34 million. For a government research agency, a licence that comes with an equity stake and a cross-strait partner is a notable shift from the classic option-and-royalty deal.

The rank reflects the method, not the institution's weight. A*STAR's best-known asset, the made-in-Singapore antibody-drug conjugate EBC-129, has progressed into Phase 1b dose expansion, but it has not been licensed out, and the 2022 Boehringer Ingelheim antibody deal falls before the window. On disclosed numbers alone, Singapore's flagship agency is quieter than its reputation.

9. WEHI, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (Australia)

WEHI is on this list for what its fund has started to do. Ternarx was the first Australian company dedicated to targeted protein degraders, born from a consortium of WEHI, the Children's Cancer Institute and Monash. When a US investor wanted its prostate programme, WEHI Ventures co-invested to spin the asset into a US entity while the Melbourne team kept equity and moved on to autoimmune targets. Forbes Australia quoted the chief executive as saying the lead asset now has its own funding in the US.

That is a template other institutes in the region can copy: keep the platform at home, let the first asset travel with a specialist investor, and retain a slice of both. The weakness, for ranking purposes, is that none of the money is disclosed.

10. IIT Bhubaneswar and the Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar (India)

India's academic system announces technology transfers frequently, but most are process know-how, diagnostics or reformulations, and many omit a date, a licensee or a defined asset. The Bhubaneswar tuberculosis vaccine agreement clears all three bars: a named candidate, a named licensee that will take it through development and validation, and a dated signing.

Its position at number ten is a statement about disclosure, not ambition. Other Indian items examined, including IIT Indore's engineered L-asparaginase transfer for leukaemia and CSIR-CDRI's 2024 co-development arrangement with Zydus on an osteoporosis drug for chronic kidney disease, either lacked terms or were structured as collaborations rather than licences. They are recorded here rather than counted.

Checked and not counted

The boundary rule asks that absences be stated. These institutions were searched in English and, where relevant, in Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Not finding a qualifying disclosure is not proof that none exists; it means none was public enough to verify.

• Tsinghua University and Peking University. Bayer renewed its Tsinghua collaboration for a sixth phase in June 2025, and the company says it has run more than 100 projects with the two universities, but these are research agreements, not licences. Peking University's small-molecule fibrosis transfer to a Fosun-linked company predates the window.
• Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica. The institute says 50 of its research results have been commercialised since 2015, but no 2024 to 2026 drug-asset licence with a named licensee and terms was located.
• West China Hospital, Sichuan University. Its public transfer notices in the window include an antibacterial-use patent assigned to a Chengdu company for RMB 100,000 and a RMB 720,000 exclusive licence for a pressure-injury detection method. The first is a use patent rather than a development asset; the second is not a drug.
• Fudan University. A February 2025 notice assigns a tuberculosis DNA vaccine patent application to the Shanghai infection and immunity innovation centre for RMB 200,000 upfront plus a share of onward income that steps down from 50% to 5% as the asset advances. The assignee is a research centre rather than a company, so it is not counted, but the stage-linked revenue share is a structure other offices should study.
• The University of Hong Kong. The new Gobi-HKU Fund I, launched in March 2026, has invested in AI drug design spinout AilsynBio, but the amount is undisclosed and the company sells a platform rather than a licensed asset.
• National University of Singapore, Academia Sinica and Seoul National University. No qualifying asset licence or disclosed-terms spinout round inside the window was found. In Seoul, Asan Medical Center and the University of Ulsan licensed stem cell culture technology to Pharmicell in November 2025, but that is a manufacturing method rather than an asset.

What the list says

• The money is in the onward deal. The three largest figures on the list are not university licences at all. They are a pharma company buying a licensee (Vicebio) and a mid-size pharma company optioning assets from institutional spinouts (Sovargen and Cureverse). Institutions that kept equity in those companies captured value that a royalty-only licence would have left behind.
• Korea has found a buyer. KAIST and KIST both landed Angelini Pharma for preclinical or Phase 1 neurology assets within a year. Specialist European companies building a single franchise appear more willing than large pharma to take early academic risk from Asia in exchange for ex-Asia rights.
• China's academic engine is under-reported, not absent. Universities transfer patents through dated public notices with prices, but the assets are hard to follow once a founder's company takes them. ShanghaiTech is on the list because it publishes.
• Japan builds companies, not deals. Tokyo and Kyoto rank on rounds measured in hundreds of millions of yen. The creation rate is high, the cheques are small, and priced out-licences are rare.
• Australia has institutional capital at every stage. UniQuest, Monash Ventures and WEHI Ventures each put their own money beside outside investors, and three of the ten entries come from one country as a result.

For partnering teams meeting Asia-Pacific offices in Cologne this week, the practical questions follow from that. Does the office take equity, and has any of it been realised? Has a spinout ever licensed onward, and to whom? And will the office publish the terms? The institutions above can answer at least one of those with a number. Next year, the list will be longer if more of their peers can too.