About the event
From June 22 to 25, 2025, Stämm participated in the BIO International Convention. Our Head of BD & Commercial Strategy, Román Ortega Bianchi, and our Innovation Fellow, Jean-Christophe Quillet, represented us at the convention. The event, held in San Diego, is the world’s largest biotechnology event and is organized annually by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO). It provided a platform for networking and partnering, with a focus on strategic collaborations and financing opportunities.
If you couldn’t attend, here are three key themes that dominated the conversation this year:
1. AI and Digital Health
There’s no surprise that AI keeps dominating conversations across industries, and life sciences is no exception. Both panels and hallway talks were packed with excitement and open questions about how it’s reshaping and will continue to transform the future of biotech. From accelerating drug discovery with generative models to optimizing clinical trial design, the possibilities feel endless.
Companies are exploring ways to close biodata gaps to build useful digital twins and improve decision-making. This requires a focus on both data quality and quantity, as well as managing constraints in computing power.
The conversation also highlighted the need for cross-disciplinary professionals who can bridge the gap between biology and AI to meet growing industry needs.
In addition, the FDA’s recent draft guidance on AI/ML in drug development was cited as a key factor that intensified the ongoing debate.
2. Patient-centric approach
This year’s convention also emphasized a simple but powerful idea: innovation has to start with the patient. It’s not just about finding new treatments but about truly understanding what patients are not getting from current solutions and what needs to be done. Sessions across the board underscored how incorporating patient voices, especially from minorities, such as those suffering from rare diseases, can lead to better-designed trials and more impactful therapies. Real-world evidence, digital biomarkers, and patient-reported outcomes are becoming central to how we develop and deliver care.
3. Biotherapeutics
Treatments derived from living cells or organisms have been transforming medicine for decades, but their momentum is far from slowing down. From cell and gene therapies to RNA-based treatments, these innovations are offering more targeted and personalized approaches. Still, biotherapeutics need to find a way to overcome some collateral challenges, such as their delivery at a cost-benefit, at the specific, required scale for each case, and with the consistency and quality required.
The bio-industry is interested in developing continuous manufacturing as a process intensification strategy. However, there is still room for improvement in this area, including the development of better analytical tools and AI optimization for real-time control.
Companies developing novel molecules and complex biologics face a significant challenge in ensuring patient access. One main bottleneck is the cost of manufacturing and the final product price, which makes life-changing solutions inaccessible to patients. In this scenario, continuous manufacturing emerges as a potential solution to improve access.
This year, we saw big conversations around scalability and how to make these therapies more accessible. Continuous biomanufacturing enables the production of biologics in an uninterrupted process, reducing or even eliminating batches. One key aspect is the flexibility this approach brings to the entire development-to-production process. More specifically, it allows for the production of small dose for low-demand products at a cost-efficient price, with the ability to easily scale up in the event of higher demand.
Other key topics included drug development and delivery, gene and cell therapies, global health equity, and regulatory and policy updates.
At Stämm, we were glad to attend the event and contribute to the conversation on advancing biotechnology innovation.
