How Many ADC Clinical Trials Are Running in 2026?

711 antibody-drug conjugate trials are active on ClinicalTrials.gov as of August 20, 2026, and 175 of them already carry 2026 start dates. The phase mix, the growth curve, and the sponsors, counted from DataLookout's daily monitoring corpus.

The headline number

711 ADC trials are live on ClinicalTrials.gov as of August 20, 2026. That splits into 378 recruiting today, 173 that have finished enrolling and are waiting on data, 157 registered but not yet open, and 3 enrolling by invitation. Those 157 not-yet-open trials are the field's near-term future, already visible. DataLookout monitors all four active statuses registry-wide, so this is the live ADC pipeline, not a sample of it.

Active ADC trials by phase

The picture is one enormous Phase 2 bulge. 375 of the 711 active trials sit there, more than every other interventional phase combined. That is what a field looks like mid-proof: past safety, fighting for efficacy across dozens of targets. The 106 Phase 3 trials are each a large, expensive bet that an ADC can enter standard of care, and each readout will move a program, and sometimes a company's valuation.

Active ADC trials by start year

One reading note first: this chart shows the start year of trials that are active today, not "trials started per year." A trial that started in 2018 and wrapped up in 2023 is invisible here, so the early years show survivors only.

175 trials starting in 2026 are already active, more than the surviving cohort of any earlier year, 2025 included, with four months of the year still to go.

Who runs ADC trials

The single busiest ADC sponsor on the registry is Merck Sharp & Dohme, with 45 active trials. That puts it ahead of DXd originator Daiichi Sankyo (25), AbbVie (23), GSK (19), AstraZeneca (17), and Gilead (16).

Industry dominates the top of the list, but not the field. Companies lead 235 of the 711 active trials; the other 476, two thirds, are led by hospitals, universities, and government agencies, spread across 222 distinct institutions. No single one dominates: even the leaders, the National Cancer Institute and Fudan University, run 24 each. Much of this work is investigator-initiated, testing combinations and treatment strategies around ADCs that are already approved.

How we counted

Every number on this page comes directly from ClinicalTrials.gov records, which DataLookout snapshots and diffs daily. A trial counts as an ADC trial when its title or conditions name an ADC drug, an ADC payload (vedotin, deruxtecan, govitecan, and similar), or the class itself; imaging studies where "ADC" means apparent diffusion coefficient are excluded. Treat the counts as floors: a trial that names its ADC only deeper in the record is missed.

Data as of August 20, 2026. The numbers refresh when this page regenerates.

Frequently asked questions

Related resources

• Antibody-drug conjugate clinical trials
• Daiichi Sankyo pipeline
• AstraZeneca pipeline
• Merck pipeline
• Gilead Sciences pipeline