Pharmaceutical companies are acquiring overseas drug candidates at record volume, pricing them almost entirely on the strength of the science. But Resilient Performance Group LLC, a rare disease commercial advisory practice founded by Brian Baldari, Pharm.D., MBA, has identified what it says is going unpriced: the Landing Gap. This is the commercial exposure created when an asset developed under one regulatory and payer system must now be launched under a different one.
The volume of deals is not in dispute. The value of licensing deals signed by companies in the greater China region rose nearly tenfold between 2021 and 2025, reaching $137.7 billion, according to data provider Pharmcube as reported by Reuters. Analysis published by PitchBook found that nearly three quarters of cross-border licensing agreements involved assets still in preclinical or Phase 1 testing, and concluded that China's edge in generating early-stage candidates is likely to persist. Buyers are acquiring earlier, in larger numbers, and from further away than at any point in the industry's history.
The implication is that the diligence is thorough on the molecule but thin on everything downstream of approval. As Baldari put it, an asset crosses a border in a single transaction, but the commercial understanding required to launch it here does not cross with it. The Landing Gap captures the unexamined assumptions about whether the development program supports a US label, whether the value story survives a US payer, and whether origin market pricing holds up in the US channel. For buyers, this means the true cost of a deal may be significantly higher than the headline price suggests.
Resilient Performance Group has formalized the work under a named practice, Cross-Border Commercial Readiness. The practice is not new. The firm has performed this work since it began operating in July 2025, and across its first twelve months, 58 percent of engagements required commercial perspective spanning more than one geographic market. Every engagement addressed the United States, and a majority also addressed Europe, Japan, or China. Over that period, the firm completed 26 engagements for 14 clients across ten therapeutic and functional areas, including rare renal disease, complement biology, hematology, cardiovascular and cardiometabolic disease, hepatology, market access and reimbursement, and pipeline prioritization. Engagements supported assets from first-in-human through Phase 3. Repeat business accounted for 46 percent of engagements, concentrated in two long-running client relationships. The work also shifted from discrete scoped projects toward multi-month embedded commercial leadership for organizations that have not yet built a standing commercial function.
Baldari's perspective is rooted in experience on both sides of the transaction. He spent 24 years leading pharmaceutical drug launches across medical affairs, market access, US marketing, and global strategy, rising to Vice President and Senior General Manager. He has participated in sixteen brand launches and led pipeline strategy across more than 100 compounds. He holds a Doctor of Pharmacy from Rutgers University and an MBA in healthcare from George Washington University. "I have sat on both sides of this," Baldari said. "I have carried general manager accountability for delivering a product to US customers, and I have built global strategy for assets that originated outside the United States. Most people have done one or the other. The reason this gap persists is that pricing it requires someone who has done both, and there are not many of us."
The Cross-Border Commercial Readiness Practice serves chief commercial officers, founders, chief medical officers, boards, and investors evaluating or executing on in-licensed and cross-border assets, covering commercial diligence, US launch strategy, market access and reimbursement frameworks, competitive positioning, and investor-facing commercial materials. Client identities and engagement specifics are not disclosed. More information is available at resilexec.com.
