Trends and Therapeutic Areas to Watch in 2025

What we asked: “Looking ahead to the next 5–10 years, what will be the key disruptors and/or what can be improved upon in the pharma industry?”

Response from: Marwan Alsarraj, Associate Director, Marketing Programs, Digital Biology, Bio-Rad Laboratories

Several transformative changes would significantly impact the future of drug development, but three stand out as particularly exciting.

Firstly, the potential of personalized medicine, and the shift towards treatments tailored to individual patients or genetic profiles, are not just promising, but are poised to revolutionize healthcare. In response, the International Consortium for Personalised Medicine (ICPerMed) predicts that the implementation of personalized medicine will lead to the next generation of healthcare by 2030. This approach promises earlier diagnosis, reduced adverse effects, and ultimately improved patient outcomes by leveraging developments in the biomedical, social, and economic sciences, together with technological advancements.

Secondly, I would like to see a greater focus on sustainability in drug manufacturing to reduce our environmental impact. It’s crucial that we recognize the current resource-intensive and waste generating processes in the production of APIs. By increasing manufacturing efficiency, we can simultaneously reduce material and energy wastage, ultimately minimizing manufacturing costs. 

There are several proposed solutions to this challenge, including the repurposing of used solvents for incineration to generate heat, or performing oil recirculation to support the operation of essential processing equipment, such as vacuums, pumps, and compressors. Using recirculating oil, these systems can operate more efficiently, reducing energy consumption and associated emissions. Many companies are also seeking to reduce their physical footprints – opting for benchtop and flexible equipment, reducing requirements for large laboratories and manufacturing facilities to minimize environmental impact.

The third change that would significantly impact the industry is the increasing role of AI and ML in drug development workflows. The potential of AI tools to predict drug efficacy and safety quickly and accurately is truly exciting, accelerating target discovery and accelerating preclinical testing. To fully realize this, we need comprehensive, reliable datasets and a collaborative approach to drug discovery. Open resources and communication between scientists and manufacturers would facilitate data sharing, unlocking the full potential of AI in drug development.

Response from: Christine Sakdalan, US Therapeutic Area Head, Mental Health, Boehringer Ingelheim

Prescription digital therapeutics (PDTs) have been a key disruptor driving the industry over the past ten years and will continue revolutionizing the healthcare landscape, particularly for mental health. One billion individuals worldwide currently live with a mental illness, many of whom often experience stigma, inaccessible care, provider shortages, and healthcare systems that are difficult to navigate. These barriers contribute to delayed diagnoses and less effective ongoing management and long-term support. PDTs have the potential to provide meaningful benefits to both providers and patients managing serious mental illnesses. Providers can deliver direct care through remote, customizable plans, while patients can access treatment regardless of time or place. This makes healthcare more accessible, affordable, and more easily adaptable, which is vital for individuals with serious mental illnesses that make it difficult to coordinate in-person visits and stay on top of their treatment plans. As technology evolves, so must our approach to care. At Boehringer Ingelheim, we’re excited to see how PDTs will evolve to address unmet patient needs and make healthcare more accessible.

Response from: Torsten Wöhr, CCO, Bachem

When it comes to disruptors, all current indicators suggest GLP-1 and hormone-derived peptide drugs will make a big difference. People call it the healthcare revolution, and I tend to agree. These drugs represent the beginning of a blur between lifestyle, nutrition, healthy living, and medicine.

When you lose weight, you feel better about yourself – and naturally, everyone will want that choice for themselves (irrespective of doctors and healthcare systems). The industry must now get ready for that possibility. With lifestyle, it is more important than ever that you can scale manufacturing effectively, fast, and produce quality at low cost.

 We mustn’t avoid the reality of sustainability in this conversation, however. If for every injection there is roughly two liters of DMF that goes down the drain, consumers won’t feel good about the product. These are great molecules, and our part is to make them safe, affordable, and environmentally friendly.

Response from: Rohan Palekar, CEO, 89bio

Biopharmaceutical companies have long been in pursuit, yet have consistently fallen short, of delivering a treatment for patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), a chronic and progressive liver disease that is a leading cause of liver transplants among adults. The accumulation of fat and inflammation in the liver caused by MASH can result in fibrosis, which damages the liver and leads to more severe liver-related complications, including cirrhosis, liver failure, and hepatocellular cancer (HCC).

Once a patient develops cirrhosis, the risk for serious intervention such as liver transplant increases. In the past 10 years, the industry has been actively trying to change the trajectory of this disease. In 2024, the FDA approved the first treatment for MASH, but there is still a need for additional therapies to treat millions of patients worldwide.

It comes as no surprise that weight-loss therapies such as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists have disrupted the treatment landscape for patients with obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiometabolic diseases, and a growing number of indications in the past couple years. However, these GLP-1 options have not demonstrated rapid anti-fibrotic effects that advanced MASH patients need to improve outcomes, alleviate the burden of this disease and make a huge impact on the healthcare system. In the next 10 years, I anticipate there being more potent and more tolerable anti-fibrotic therapeutic options for MASH available to address this white space for patients.

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