The first Evaluate webinar of the year is in the bag. Based on our 2025 Preview report, this session brought together three of our industry experts to discuss what the year ahead might hold for pharma. They may not have had a crystal ball, but they had plenty of detailed data and insight which is probably more sensible.

If you missed the 2025 Preview webinar, your year is clearly off to a rough start. However, it’s available on demand; so you can catch up. In the meantime, here are three things we learned in from the conversation with Norstella’s Daniel Chancellor, Evaluate’s Mark Lansdell and Scrip’s Alex Shimmings.

1. There’s more to come in obesity drugs. Our report revealed that together, Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide and Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide will hit revenues of over $70bn in this year. But while the two market leaders may dominate at the moment, there’s still a lot to come in this evolving space. Recent trial results for Amgen’s MariTide and Novo’s CagriSema disappointed, although Alex noted that it’s a measure of how remarkable this field has become when 23% weight loss disappointed the market. This may have temporarily taken the wind out of investors’ sails, but there is a lot more in the pipeline. What remains to be seen in how the follow-on obesity drugs will differentiate against the incumbents, with the impact on lean muscle mass likely to be a focus.
2. China will be a leading source of in-licensing. One topic our panel kept coming back to was China which really made its presence felt in dealmaking last year. Companies in the west have moved from considering China as a threat to seeing it as an opportunity to source well-priced pipeline assets. There are real strengths in areas like antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and bispecifics, and around a third of Big Pharma deals in 2024 involved a China-headquartered firm. The country has an exceptional R&D engine relative to the size of the commercial market and we can expect to see companies facing the impact of loss of exclusivity heading east, shopping baskets in hand. Whatever modality you’re interested in, China is likely to feature on your asset short list.
3. Small players are still commercialising – it’s just not clear from the data. 2024’s expected biggest launches featured an unusually high number of new drugs from smaller players. The analysis of the 2025 list showed that number dropping back to just two; Insmed (Brensocatib) and Cytokinetics (Aficamten). However, both these drugs are forecast to realise annual revenues of $2.8bn in 2030 which puts them both near the top of the table. This data might not tell the whole story, though. The panel felt that there was still a trend towards smaller players going it alone – though with EY reporting over $1.3tn in firepower in the market, many of those will get scooped up sooner or later.

The panel covered much more than this during the discussion and there was plenty of data to get your teeth into as well. I recommend listening to the full webinar to catch up on all the detail. You can also check our full webinar back catalogue as well as register for upcoming events here.