BIO Boston: 2025 is shaping up to be a year of challenge – but also opportunity – say biotech bosses
This year’s BIO International Convention, held mid-June in Boston, took place against a backdrop dominated by global events. Such events are always liable to send unwelcome shudders through the investment world. But, as nearly 20,000 delegates gathered at the city’s exhibition and convention centre, they focused on their matters at hand – trying to forge a path ahead for biotechnology, one deal at a time.
So, what were the major themes to come out of BIO Boston 2025? Who’s getting excited about what? And – besides the obvious macro problems bearing down on the sector – what did delegates see as the key issues facing biotech?
Mega-trends: The advance of AI and China in biotech innovation
When it came to the most significant trends and themes emanating at the conference, the increasing role of AI was frequently mentioned.
Stephan Schann, chief scientific officer at GPCR drug discovery company Domain Therapeutics, said: “AI and digital health continue to be prominent focus areas. There is genuine excitement, but also a clearer understanding that AI is only as powerful as the data and science that drive it. True progress comes from robust biological understanding and careful clinical validation, not just algorithms.”
Meanwhile, Miguel Barrero, chief business development and innovation officer at CNS specialist Neuraxpharm, added: “One of the most compelling developments at BIO 2025 was the deep integration of AI into drug development. It’s clear that AI will be a driving force in transforming and accelerating R&D in the years ahead, reshaping how we discover, test, and bring therapies to market.”
Barrero’s point was mirrored by Maite Agüeros, chief executive officer & co-founder of Spain’s InnoUp Farma, which is focused on better oral delivery solutions of drugs with challenging profiles. She said: “A major trend at this year’s BIO Convention was the convergence of advanced drug delivery systems with artificial intelligence. There’s a growing recognition that AI will be instrumental in optimising formulation design, predicting patient responses, and accelerating the development cycle for oral therapies. This is particularly exciting for companies like InnoUp Farma, where our innovation in oral drug delivery can be amplified by data-driven approaches.”
Aligned to the increasing importance of AI in drug discovery has been the growth in what Domain’s Schann called “smarter clinical trial design”.
Schann said: “What stood out most for me at BIO 2025 was the continued momentum behind patient-centric drug development and smarter clinical trial design. We are also seeing meaningful advances in applying high-quality biomarkers to make trials more informative and efficient. The emphasis is clearly shifting toward relevance and rigour, which strongly resonates with our approach at Domain: embedding precision into every stage of development from the outset. Ultimately, it’s about using the right tools in the right way to bring better therapies to patients faster.”
But, while the various ways in which AI is being embedded might be the biggest single development of the last year, it hasn’t been the only story. China, and the Far East more generally, has burst onto the stage as a major innovation hub – and one that challenges the perceived superiority of Europe and North America as the world’s most productive biotech engines.
Wei Peng, chief business officer of London and Shanghai-based Crimson Gateway, which helps Western firms looking for assets to navigate the Chinese landscape, said “increased attention” was being paid to Asian biotechs.
Peng said: “Innovations from these countries are being recognised not only for their speed, but also for their quality. Notably, we're seeing a shift from the initial wave of ‘me too’ or ‘me better’ drugs towards the emergence of more first-in-class pipelines, especially from the next generation of biotech entrepreneurs.”
It was a theme picked up by Cora Griffin, head of business development at Curve Therapeutics, based in Southampton, UK, which identifies biologically active cyclic peptide and small molecule drugs which address intracellular targets using its unique mammalian cell-based Microcycle discovery platform.
Griffin said: “The pace at which innovation is emerging from China was a big talking point at BIO. This coming year, I expect that we will see the number of out-licensing deals from China to the West continue to rise.”
Frédéric Scaerou, head of global business development at Servier, pointed to the increasing importance of rare disease therapies in companies’ portfolios, being driven by looming patent cliffs. He said: “As a result, we can expect a surge in deal-making activities in the rare disease space.”
Developments in neurology and emerging oncology modalities featuring strongly
Picking a favourite session or presentation at a major conference can be difficult, as there is always so much choice.
Nonetheless, Peng identified the session on psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. While they were “historically challenging for drug development,” she said that “recent breakthroughs in disease biology understanding, biomarker analysis, and delivery technologies are creating new opportunities. Combining these new findings with high-speed, high-quality discovery engines across the world will significantly accelerate therapeutic development in CNS.”
Marjorie Sidhoum, vice president of business development & corporate communication at Domain Therapeutics, identified a session on the oncology market.
She said: “It highlighted the industry’s growing appetite for emerging modalities like ADCs, radiopharmaceuticals, and targeted cell therapies, signalling a shift toward more sophisticated approaches to improving efficacy in oncology. That said, small molecules and monoclonal antibodies still account for nearly half of all deals today. What is clear is that capital is moving toward differentiated, high-impact therapies with the potential to transform patient outcomes. That is exactly where we see our GPCR-targeting therapies playing a key role.”
Biotech’s top challenges – there’s no ignoring the f-word?
In terms of challenges facing biotech that need more attention – and there are lots – several raised the issue of new drugs’ affordability. Given moves by the US administration to cut the country’s drugs bill, and European nations’ worries about ever-increasing healthcare costs, this issue isn’t going away.
Neuraxpharm’s Barrero said, while biotech was entering “a transformative era” thanks to rapid advancements across a range of technologies, “a key challenge persists: ensuring equitable access to these breakthroughs.”
He explained: “Currently, their high cost and complexity limit availability to wealthier nations. To truly realise the global potential of these innovations, all stakeholders – governments, regulators, industry, and academia – must collaborate to create incentives that balance innovation with affordability, such as extending patent protections to encourage and prioritise broader global access.”
Crimson Gateway’s Peng singled out the high cost of new cell and gene therapies. She said: “Pricing for cell and gene therapies remains a significant challenge for future commercialisation. The industry needs to collectively address manufacturing costs and establish faster pathways for clinical development to improve accessibility.”
Barrero’s colleague Charles Morris, chief corporate development officer at Neuraxpharm, outlined the perennial issue of finding transformative new treatments.
He said: “The biggest challenge the industry continues to face is where new drugs will come from to address unmet medical needs. Which new platforms will lead to breakthroughs and how will these be funded?”
In 2025, there’s no getting away from the funding issue.
Servier’s Scaerou said: “Financing will be a key challenge in the upcoming year for biotech companies as innovation requires allocating resources and taking risks. That is why, at Servier, we invest in several venture capital funds that support biotech companies in developing their innovation up to the highest inflection points.”
“Building partnerships” and “a collaborative approach” were therefore crucial, he said. Scaerou found a panel on dealmaking trends – which stressed the importance of building relationships early on – to be most informative: “Trust is the most important factor for successful partnerships, which is why building relationships over time is key in any collaboration.”
Curve’s Griffin noted: “The unstable investment landscape for venture-backed companies and the relatively closed biotech IPO window are a major threat to the biotech sector. The industry needs to develop an innovative approach to funding cutting-edge science.”
On top of that, said Kuang He, VP at Novo Holdings Seed Investments, was “the sudden decline in venture capital available for seed and early-stage start-ups since Q1 2025.”
She continued: “Biotech is an industry that depends on long-term risk capital, and the rapid withdrawal of such funding threatens to deepen the ‘valley of death’, which could significantly hinder innovation and talent development, with long-lasting consequences.”
Nonetheless, there was cause for hope: “A trend that I saw at BIO 2025 is that biotech companies are getting more creative in securing funding – an encouraging sign that innovation can continue to advance, despite a challenging macroeconomic environment,” she said.
About the author
Stephen Adams has been an associate director at Optimum Strategic Communications, a specialist life sciences communications agency, for two years. Prior to that he was a health journalist, spending six years at The Daily Telegraph and then a decade at The Mail on Sunday.
