To ring in the new year, Drug Discovery News editors spoke with biotech and pharma leaders to find out what advances they predict will make it big in 2025.

What do you think will be the biggest innovation in drug discovery in 2025?

Sandi See Tai, Chief Development Officer of Lexeo Therapeutics: 

We are just at the beginning of what I believe will be a paradigm shift towards more personalized and genetic treatment approaches. We’ve seen this trend over the past decade or so in oncology, but I think the biggest innovation looking ahead will be transformation in other therapeutic areas. Looking at cardiac disease for example, treatments have been historically focused on large populations with a one-size-fits-all approach, but there are many heart conditions with underlying genetic causes or risk factors that could be better addressed with genetic medicine. Personally, I believe cardiac diseases have huge untapped potential for this type of innovation, but I think we will see the continued growth of genetic medicine approaches across all categories from heart disease to neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and beyond.

Quyen Nguyen, Chief Executive Officer of Alume Biosciences: 

The biopharma industry is advancing fluorescent-guided surgery, a groundbreaking technology that uses molecularly targeted fluorescence to illuminate critical structures like tumors, blood vessels, and, most importantly, nerves. Nerve preservation is crucial for maintaining function and quality of life after surgery, and I believe 2025 will bring significant strides in this area. Innovations in nerve illumination could revolutionize precision surgery, ensuring safer outcomes and setting a new standard for surgical care.

Johan Luthman, Executive Vice President of R&D at Lundbeck Therapeutics: 

I'm very excited about chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy. I’m not a fan of cell therapy in general, and I think it's really tough in neuroscience, but I think CAR T has had some tremendous results in some indications. Yes, there have been some ups and downs, and scaling it up for industrial use is very hard. But, I think if we manage to scale this up and make this big, then we are potentially healing some very chronic, debilitating diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus. If we can basically stop and reverse those diseases and maybe even heal them, if I may put it, that is super exciting.

Artificial intelligence (AI) — we just have to talk about it. I think AI is already there in drug discovery, but what makes me excited is that AI will also transform clinical trials and how we collect real-world evidence data, as well as how we write regulatory documents — very practical things. The things we spend a lot of man hours on writing and typing up will tomorrow be easier written and better written than by people. 

Sabrina Johnson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Daré Bioscience: 

There's been a lot more conversation around women in studies — not just in women's health. The new guidelines the Food and Drug Administration has about diversity in clinical trials are going to help us as an industry. I'm excited about that because it's going to open up new opportunities for unmet needs, where we can start looking specifically at populations and maybe have new labeling for a drug, so that's a win for everyone. It's good for those patients, but it's also good for the drug developers. So, I think some of those changes are actually a really exciting thing for the industry, and I think as the industry starts to get a little more comfortable with it, they're going to see it opens up a lot of opportunities. I'm excited about that: to do good and also be good for our industry.

Tim Campbell, Vice President of Hematology and Cell Therapy, Early Clinical Development at Bristol Myers Squibb: 

I don't know if it's going to happen next year, but I'll tell you one of the things I'm most excited about is starting to crack the code in solid tumors for cell therapy. Because I just think if you look at those diseases, there's a huge potential to offer patients the types of responses that we see in other diseases with cell therapy. We're depleting blood cancer cells and now extending that into really trying to go after solid tumors. I think each year brings incremental progress in that. And I really think that the floodgates are going to open, maybe not next year, but maybe over the next several years, in terms of being able to crack the code to offer those patients the best responses to cell therapy with safe responses as well.

Some responses have been edited for length and clarity.