Daiichi Sankyo will seek to maintain its edge over competitors in precision cancer therapies by pushing ahead with clinical trials of drug candidates being developed using new technology, a top executive has said.

The drugmaker believes its next generation of ¡°antibody drug conjugate¡± (ADC) medicines that show promise in early stage human testing will help keep the company ahead of the pack, its President and Chief Operating Officer Hiroyuki Okuzawa said on Friday in Tokyo.

¡°Big pharma companies and Chinese drugmakers are following us, but we will stay ahead of them,¡± he said.

ADC works like a guided missile that hits cancerous cells while sparing the healthy ones, and has the potential to replace chemotherapy. Daiichi Sankyo has emerged as a leader in this space following the success of a breast cancer therapy developed with AstraZeneca, and a $22 billion deal with Merck & Co. to work on similar drugs.

In September, Daiichi Sankyo said that one of its latest experimental therapies, dubbed DS-9606, developed through the company¡¯s newer ADC drug platform has shown early promise against multiple cancer types where existing therapies have led to poor patient outcomes.

Despite the resounding success brought by the Enhertu therapy for breast cancer, some of Daiichi Sankyo¡¯s subsequent candidates have faced setbacks this year. An ADC drug dubbed Dato-DXd co-developed with AstraZeneca fell short of expectations around extending patients¡¯ lives on a metric called overall survival.

Separately, Daiichi Sankyo and Merck are working to address questions from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over an ADC drug candidate that¡¯s been shown to curb cancer growth in late stage trials.

Meanwhile, the race to develop ADC into the industry¡¯s next blockbuster medicine has heated up, with pharma juggernauts from Pfizer and AbbVie wading into the space and spawning some of the industry¡¯s biggest acquisitions in recent years. A growing legion of Chinese biotechs have also come up with promising ADC candidates, earning them partnerships with leading global drugmakers.

Given ADC drugs¡¯ potential to become the mainstream treatment option for cancer, drugmakers including Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca are boosting production. Okuzawa said the company is working with external contract manufacturers to expand capacity beyond the new plants the company has planned.

On Enhertu, Okuzawa said it¡¯s on track to achieve a revenue forecast of over ?500 billion ($3.4 billion) this fiscal year, thanks to strong demand that comes in part from China.