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MADRID — If you had to pinpoint one subject that stood out at this year’s European Society for Medical Oncology meeting, a massive conference with thousands of people from 140-some countries and 2,500 studies presented, it would be a burgeoning type of cancer treatment called antibody-drug conjugates.

The conference opened to the news that Merck had signed one of the biggest licensing deals in industry history — worth up to $22 billion — to partner on three of the compounds from ADC specialist Daiichi Sankyo. GSK followed up with an ADC licensing announcement of its own (if a much smaller one). Multiple ADC studies were presented at the meeting’s top sessions. ADCs were, in short, the belle of the cancer research ball.

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The thing is, ADCs are actually quite an old approach.

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