Bonus Episode - The Trends Shaping the Pharmaceutical Industry in 2026

Join host, Jo Fahy, and pharmaceuticals and healthcare reporter, Jessica Davis Pluss, to weigh up the forces shaping pharma in 2026. From AI’s real gains in clinics and labs, to the case for inclusive data, we also discuss the politics of who funds innovation, and why rare diseases and antibiotics deserve our focus. 

SWI swissinfo.ch is a public service media company based in Bern, Switzerland. 

Transcript

Setting The 2026 Agenda

Jo Fahy 0:52

Swiss Info Podcasts. Hello and welcome to the second bonus episode of the Swiss Connection Science Podcast. I'm Joe Fay, and I'm here in the studio with our pharmaceuticals reporter, Jessica Davis Plus. And today we're going to be looking at the trends that we see coming in 2026 for the pharmaceuticals industry. In our last episodes in season six, we reported on a couple of topics that are going to stay relevant this year. And of course, AI is on that list, isn't it, Jessica?

Jessica Davis Plüss 1:31

Yes, definitely.

Jo Fahy 1:32

It has to be, doesn't it? Yes. And AI is disrupting industries and workforces across the planet, which I think puts it at the top of our list of trends for this year. And Jessica, tell me, how important is it in drug development and how do you think it's going to progress this year?

Jessica Davis Plüss 1:48

Ooh, that's a big question. I honestly don't want to make any predictions about AI. I think we should probably ask Chat GPT what it says about AI.

Jo Fahy 1:56

I have a few for us, yeah.

AI Engines For Drug Discovery

Hype Meets Biology’s Complexity

Jessica Davis Plüss 1:58

Yeah. Um, because it's so unpredictable. Um, but I think there's a few interesting things that are happening that I think are going to continue in 2026 and that I'm at least looking out for. Um, and I think we see one is on the hospitals, diagnostics, and just the way AI is going to be used in hospitals to really hopefully relieve doctors and uh, you know, of of some of the the administrative maybe workload, or also um be able to provide more clear, precise answers in terms of the diagnosis of diseases by having you know an AI model or algorithm be able to, you know, look at different MRI scans and be able to say, you know, what exactly what is the the problem disease, be able to really diagnose someone. Um, but I think beyond that, and the part that I'm honestly really focused on and more interested in is the drug development side of things. And there's been so much hype, and there are quite a few startup companies. I mean, Isomorphic Labs is one of the ones. It's quite interesting. They also just opened an office in Lausanne a couple of years ago and they're just expanding, is um is these companies that are in the drug discovery and drug development, and they're really building those platforms or what they call engines, those drug development engines where AI isn't just being applied to one disease, but they're maybe testing it in one disease, but they're hoping that it they're building a model that could be repeated and applied to many different diseases. And honestly, this will and I don't want to say could because I think it will revolutionize drug development. And when I say revolutionize, it'll be faster, it'll be cheaper, and you'll be able to hopefully cure diseases that you thought you couldn't cure at all. But there's a lot of challenges. Uh companies have highlighted this. I mean, first of all, you know, will these companies still have money to keep them going because it is a long haul? Drug development still has a huge failure rate. You know, 90% of drugs don't actually make it to market, even though they look like a great discovery in early stages. So I think that many of the companies are realizing that biology is much more complex. People are much more complex. Why does this drug work for me, but not for someone else? So I think um there's still a lot that companies need to learn before they can really confidently say, okay, this AI platform can discover drugs across a range of diseases. But I think we'll have a lot of interesting insights coming out this year that will give an indication as to which direction, maybe even which models, which platforms, will be the ones that we can use in the future.

Jo Fahy 4:37

So a wide range of opportunities, but potentially coming over a very steep learning curve. Yes. Yes, I think so. The role that gender plays in medicine has also become a huge issue. I mean, it already has been for many different reasons, and I think this will probably also continue this year. We talked about gender-specific clinical trials before in this podcast. Um, but we've also really seen, I think, in society as a whole, a real thirst for breaking taboos, expanding knowledge, and also kind of increasing understanding for topics like the menopause, for example. How do you think this whole era is going to play out over the coming months?

Gender Data And Better Medicine

Women’s Health, Menopause, Longevity

Jessica Davis Plüss 5:17

I think that some of the I don't want to say drama, but I think some of the kind of heated debate around diversity and inclusion as a topic, um, I think it will die down a bit. Um I think that people will remember and realize that gender diversity is good for developing better medicine, that the more we understand about how this is applied to, you know, men, women, you know, different ages, sexes, genders, um, different ethnicities, I think that we will be able to develop more personalized medicine. So I think there'll be less talk about do we support, do we not support you know, diversity and inclusion? And it will be more about, you know, this is how we make medicine that can work for everyone. So that's I think going to be hopefully progress in 2026. I think the other thing is, as you said, with women's health, I think, you know, unfortunately there's been a lot of cuts in funding to different organizations, especially in low-income developing countries that really support women's health. Um, I think a lot of people are hoping that will change. Um, I can't make any predictions about that, but I think we know how important it is to invest in in women's health, especially women in many countries are, you know, the main caregivers where they're also really important in terms of, you know, business productivity and and workforces and things like that. And I think that we're also learning a lot about women's health. And as you mentioned, menopause is an area and the importance of ovaries. And we, you know, we talked a lot about longevity in previous episodes. And um, you know, ovaries is one of those organs that we see as we get older, they don't function uh the way they used to. And I think scientists and doctors and much of the population wants to understand what does that mean for our health? Um, how do we tie the health of ovaries to our actual health of other organs in our body? And what does that mean for extending our health span and lifespan and things like that? There are a lot of really strong voices on this topic, and I think they will continue to speak up, and I think they'll get listened to much more, and so I think we'll have some interesting findings about you know how to tackle some of the symptoms of menopause that are maybe keeping us from being more productive longer in life and also healthier later in life.

Jo Fahy 7:45

Okay, so I think I detected a small note of optimism in your answer there, if I if I'm not wrong about that. And I like that. I like to think there are some good points that are hopefully going to be coming through this year. Um, if we go back to AI, of course, that's a huge driver of innovation at the moment. Um, where else do you think we're gonna see innovation coming from in the farm industry? Because although AI is so big at the moment, it's not the only thing that's driving change and innovation, of course.

Beyond AI: Who Funds Innovation

Jessica Davis Plüss 8:14

Yeah, I think a big topic this year, and this is honestly driven by a lot of the discussions at the real, you know, top levels of government is where is the innovation coming from in the future? Where are these treatments coming from in the future? And how are we going to fund innovation in the future? We realize that health systems are struggling to stay afloat. So the question is, can they continue to pay these high prices? And of course, you have government funders in the US. It's the National Institutes of Health. Um, you also have private foundations that are funding a lot of science and innovation in the health space. Um, but you have in China much more subsidies from the government. You have much more government involvement. Is that the way forward? There's also the geopolitical element of kind of who owns this innovation and where does this innovation take place? And that's been the big debate, and it's become very important also to Switzerland, which is known for innovation, known for science and technology. And of course, the US government is really trying to attract a lot of pharmaceutical companies to manufacture, to build research facilities in the US. Um, China also wants to have more companies there. They want to have their own homegrown companies that are competing with uh big pharmaceutical companies. And then Europe is wondering, okay, what is our strategy? And Europe has been much more focused on regulation. And now the question is where is Europe and in some cases, including Switzerland, how do they view their place in this kind of overall innovation ecosystem? And who uh drives, owns, funds science in the future?

Jo Fahy 9:54

Yeah. Well, that's uh certainly not a small topic for you to tackle then in the coming months.

Jessica Davis Plüss 9:58

No, luckily there are a few of us working on this topic at SwissInfo.

Jo Fahy 10:03

Yeah. And as you said, it's not directly uh sort of uh focused on the very scientific aspects that we've talked about in terms of drug development and so on, but instead very important um global politics that that still have a bearing on uh drugs and pharmaceuticals as well. If we can go from the huge topics to the much smaller ones, though, um you've told me over the past few months, while you've been working on stories that are coming up in the future, that there are a lot of exciting things happening in the treatment of diseases that we don't hear about in the mainstream. Medicines for rare diseases, for example. Um, and this is something that is quite difficult to find out about or spread knowledge about. How do you think that this is gonna feature on our radar this year?

Geopolitics: US, China, Europe

Rare Diseases And New Therapies

Jessica Davis Plüss 10:49

Rare diseases is an area I'm personally very um passionate about. I think everyone knows someone who has a rare disease. It can you know range from something that affects children maybe when they're born, or it can be something that people find out about later in life and it's maybe much more minor. But there are, I think, 7,000 rare diseases, and those are just the ones that they know about. But the interesting thing is they're learning about rare diseases every day because we have just so much more data, we have so much more a much better ability to um find out about um genetic mutations that we didn't even know existed before. So I think we're gonna find out about more rare diseases, um, and we're also going to have more hope that we can we can treat them because we have seen treatments come on the market, gene therapies in particular, but other kinds of what they call ASO treatments that are really changing the lives of uh children in particular with rare diseases, and of course the families that are caregivers for children. So I think that there's going to be more of this because now we've proven that the technology works, and I think Novartas had uh, you know, uh really the first gene therapy that has become kind of a a standard in the market, Sol Genzma, um, but of course it was priced extremely high. Um and this question of how are we going to pay for this? And what we saw over the last couple of years is countries struggle to pay for these kinds of drugs at such high prices, and this has caused some companies to become less interested in them. I mean, rare diseases already companies are reluctant to develop and invest in these areas because they don't see many patients with these diseases, so it's very difficult for them to make a profit if they invest a lot in research, and so they haven't been as interested. But there have been incentives to encourage them. But the fact is if governments don't approve them or they don't want to pay for these drugs, it becomes very difficult. And so, you know, there are more and more parents, and this is kind of a teaser to some of the stories that I've been working on and I'm really interested in, parents that are really driving this drug development because no one else will. And they have a child with a rare disease and they um they have no choice. They they know that a treatment can be developed because the science, the technology has been proven, and the researchers are interested to do it, but they need the funding to be able to do it. And so I think that we're gonna see some changes in 2026, maybe with incentives, but also a different potentially. I don't want to make huge predictions, but maybe um a different kind of business model that is working much more closely with parents, much more closely with patients themselves, and a different way to work with researchers that you know isn't necessarily completely relying on pharmaceutical companies to do everything from start to finish. So um, yeah, we'll see what that brings in 2026. It's a long process, but I think we'll have some indications. Okay.

Jo Fahy 13:51

So that's two notes of optimism that I've heard from you so far in this podcast. I like it. I like it. It seems like a whole world of possibilities are opening up the more we advance with technology and the more data we have available. So that can be a good thing.

Jessica Davis Plüss 14:03

I think it's good to start the year with optimism.

Jo Fahy 14:05

Brilliant. Um, Antesca, finally, you've hinted at a few stories that you have in the pipeline at the moment. What else are you working on at the moment? Give us a teaser for some more stories that are coming up.

Jessica Davis Plüss 14:17

Well, I am very interested. I mean, many of the stories are on AI. I'm also working on some stories about uh China and how they're leading in some of the areas, uh cancer treatment areas and the way that they're doing innovation, I think is really interesting. I am also interested in following the topic of shortages, medicine shortages. And I think we forget about that until we have an outbreak of something or we have a disease or we notice that the pharmacy is out of a medicine, and we want to know why. And so I think medicine shortages will continue to be a topic. There's a few other areas that I am working on. Antibiotics is one of them. Uh Roche, actually, so the Swiss pharmaceutical company in Basel, they uh they came out with um some data on a new antibiotic, which is really exciting because antibiotics, similar to rare diseases, is an area that companies haven't invested that much, but many of the antibiotics are uh less effective. We have growing resistance to antibiotics, and so I think that this is an area that, you know, also as a journalist, we also have a responsibility to share these kinds of findings. They might not be as exciting as obesity, um, but uh they I think are important and I think we need to continue investing in them uh in the future.

Paying For Gene And ASO Treatments

Jo Fahy 15:35

Yeah, absolutely. This whole uh antibiotic resistance topic is kind of a so big that people have almost forgotten about it in the mainstream, I guess. It is true. So thank you so much, Jessica, for giving us a few hints of the stories that are coming up um this year in 2026. I'm super looking forward to reading, watching, hearing about them on this podcast as well. And that was it for this special second bonus episode of the Swiss Connection Science Podcast. So thank you for joining me, Jessica. And coming soon, we'll have a brand new season packed full of science from the journalists here at SwissInfo, so don't miss it. Today's episode was recorded and edited by our science and video journalist Michaeli Andina. For more content, visit our website, SwissInfo.ch. I'm Joe Fay. Thanks for listening.