USA Trends and Developments Contributed by: David McIntosh, Matt Byron, Ryan Kramer, Sabrina Kim and Zoe Dettelbach, Ropes & Gray LLP
companies in the USA, according to Stifel. While this collaboration may drive increased research and development in the biotech sector, these trends also could negatively impact US biotech companies developing comparable molecules, as it may drive down the economics that licen- sees are willing to pay for such US assets. Continued influence of AI in drug discovery and innovation The ongoing trend for integrating AI into drug development activities is expected to continue in 2025. Nearly 60% of biotech and pharma executives surveyed by Deloitte said they plan to increase investments in generative AI. However, although AI carries exciting potential, industry leaders caution against mistaking this hype for AI’s ability to immediately impact clinical trials in the shorter term. A Jefferies report notes that there is a long road to realising AI’s full potential in biotech. Even now, not all biotech and pharma executives are optimistic that AI will significantly transform R&D productivity – voicing concerns particularly about data quality, significant data gaps, and still-murky regulatory waters, accord- ing to Stifel and LaBiotech. Despite these reservations, 2024 saw the growth of a new AI-driven trend, which signalled strong enthusiasm from both life sciences and technol- ogy companies in deepening AI’s integration in biotech. “Techbio” refers to the trend of tech giants such as Google, Microsoft and NVIDIA “taking more space” in the biotech sector, both through direct initiatives and strategic partner- ships, according to Andrea Bortalato, vice- president of drug discovery at SandboxAQ. By way of example, Amgen and NVIDIA announced a collaboration early on in 2024 for the use of NVIDIA’s DGX SuperPOD platform to build AI models trained to analyse one of the world’s largest human datasets in order to produce “a
human diversity atlas for drug target and dis- ease-specific biomarker discovery” and to “help develop AI-driven precision medicine models, potentially enabling individualised therapies for patients with serious diseases” . NVIDIA took the stage again at the 2025 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, announcing additional partner- ships, including: • with IQVIA to build custom AI models to speed up research and clinical development; • with Illumina to enhance genomic analysis for drug discovery; • with Mayo Clinic to develop advanced digital pathology models using NVIDIA’s Deep GPU (Graphics Processing Units) Xceleration (DGX) systems; and • with Arc Institute to develop advanced AI models that can understand and analyse bio- logical data such as DNA, RNA, and proteins. These collaborations between tech and biotech suggest that excitement in the space is likely to continue throughout 2025. Continued consumerisation of obesity-related drugs 2024 kicked off with pharma companies Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly spiking list prices for their blockbuster diabetes drugs and, throughout 2024, the market for GLP-1s remained hot. There were 24 obesity drug R&D and licens- ing deals signed in 2024, with a value totalling USD6.4 billion, and many companies of all sizes announced GLP-1 development programmes. Although significant gaps remain in affordabil- ity and access, this increasing competition may drive down prices of drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound. However, the companies behind these popular drugs are not keen to allow this to happen and many com- mentators have voiced their concern throughout
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