Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. will pay BioNTech SE as much as $11.1 billion to license a next-generation cancer drug, as competition intensifies in an area of oncology that seeks to harness the immune system to attack tumors.

BioNTech stock soared 17.1% on the news.

The German biotech will receive $1.5 billion upfront and $2 billion in installments through 2028, the companies said Monday. BioNTech will also be eligible for as much as $7.6 billion in milestone payments, and the partners will split development and manufacturing costs and profits equally.

It’s the latest in a slew of deals as companies seek a share of a market that Bloomberg Intelligence predicts could be worth $60 billion annually by 2027.

Bristol-Myers has been pumping billions into its pipeline as its biggest drugs face more competition. Its deal for BioNTech’s compound — dubbed BNT327 — comes weeks after rival Pfizer Inc. agreed to pay 3SBio Inc. as much as $6.1 billion, a record for a Chinese biotech, to license a similar cancer asset.

It also marks a major payoff for BioNTech, which initially licensed BNT327 from Chinese biotech Biotheus in 2023 and later bought the company outright for up to $950 million.

Study data presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting suggests the Pfizer asset may be the most effective, though BioNTech is ahead in the effort to expand use of such treatments to more types of cancers, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Sam Fazeli said in a note Monday.

The new category of cancer treatments exploded last year when Akeso Inc., a Chinese biotech company, and its US partner Summit Therapeutics Inc. announced that their experimental drug had beaten Merck & Co.’s Keytruda — the world’s best-selling drug — in a Chinese clinical trial.

The Akeso-Summit compound, and others like it, combine existing immune-oncology technology with a second type of medicine that cuts off the blood and oxygen supply to tumors. The idea is to make immune treatments that will be effective for more patients.

It’s still unclear whether the new drugs will replace Keytruda. Summit said Friday that although its asset reduced the risk of cancer progression in a global late-stage trial, it hadn’t yet been shown to extend patients’ lives — the gold standard in oncology.

The deal between Bristol-Myers and BioNTech gives both companies the right to study either partner’s other experimental compounds together with BNT327. That fits a BioNTech strategy of pursuing combination treatments for tumors.

Though BioNTech rose to prominence with the Covid-19 vaccine it licensed to Pfizer, it was founded before the global pandemic as a cancer company. It has deployed much of its Covid windfall back into the field of oncology.