Attempting to scry the future of the pharmaceutical industry, professional services juggernaut PwC has laid out lofty ambitions for what it believes drugmakers could achieve by 2035—as well as the steps those companies should take in 2026 to start getting ahead.
Informed by factors like evolving patient expectations, the proliferation of new technologies and the “growing unsustainability of healthcare costs,” PwC’s recommendations for the near term largely revolve around embracing artificial intelligence, deepening work with patients and taking pipelines in bold new directions—all of which could help pharmas keep up with the quickening pace of breakthrough science.
PwC’s report strikes an optimistic tone and comes on the heels of a turbulent year for the industry, albeit one that ended on a slightly brighter note as the biotech investment landscape started to make a recovery and the impact of tariffs and U.S. drug pricing reform became a bit clearer.
Still, biotechs and large pharmas alike will have their work cut out for them if they hope to meet the expectations PwC has set for the industry by the middle of the next decade.
Focusing on 2026 as a starting point, PwC has laid out several “strategic imperatives” pharma companies ought to pursue this year, calling on the industry to reinvent R&D, design enduring consumer-driven experiences and embrace AI across their workforces, as well as research, manufacturing, commercial and supply chain operations.
On R&D, the professional services firm has urged drugmakers to redirect their pipelines toward urgent and undertreated diseases, bidding companies to “move beyond incremental improvements in crowded categories.” PwC singled out reversing organ decline, curing genetic conditions and extending health lifespans as particularly enticing targets.
To get there, the pharma industry should pool internal expertise with biotech “trailblazers,” AI discovery platforms, venture incubators and academic institutions, PwC advised.
Much of PwC’s focus revolves around the potential of AI, with the report pushing for companies to embed the technology—plus automation and digital twins—at “every layer of the enterprise,” which the group argues would curb costs and speed up work. The goal, according to PwC, is to “dissolve silos” and wed R&D, production, commercial operations and supply chain management “into a single, responsive network.”
That AI bent extends to companies’ employee rosters, too, with PwC arguing that the intermeshing of human and machine intelligence will prove both “productive” and “empowering” for the industry. For now, pharmas ought to start considering their future skill needs, establishing cross-disciplinary learning programs and embedding AI tools into their employees’ daily work, PwC suggested.
Redefining patient experience will also be critical for the industry in 2026 and beyond, with PwC noting that meaningful changes in the dynamic could create something “more like a partnership and less like a transaction.”
“The most successful companies will design connected health ecosystems that accompany patients across the full spectrum of disease—anticipating needs before diagnosis, supporting them through treatment and helping sustain long-term health,” the report continues.
Here, PwC provided more concrete recommendations than in its other calls to action. The report points to the potential benefits of direct-to-patient platforms equipped with educational materials, adherence tools and data-sharing services, as well as investment in predictive and behavioral analytics.
Pharmas ought to weigh partnerships with technology and data companies to deepen connections with patients, too, the report urges, alongside several other patient experience-focused recommendations.
By embracing these recommendations, PwC reckons that the pharmas of today can lead the charge into the next decade, when the professional services firm hopes that the industry will play a “more expansive and transformative role in healthcare.”
Companies must be willing to adapt, according to the report, which argues that “pharma itself faces an urgent need for reinvention.”
For one, innovation alone may no longer be enough to satisfy investors, PwC contended, critiquing the industry’s practice of pursuing similar therapeutic areas and subsequently expending resources on “intense head-to-head competition.” Coupled with drug pricing pressures and uncertain tariff policies in the U.S., a picture emerges of a “strained business model” in which “traditional sources of growth and productivity gain lag the pace of scientific progress,” PwC said.
Pulse check on U.S.' biopharma hot spot
Providing another snapshot of that pace of industry progress—and some of the catalysts and headwinds surrounding it—is a new report on Massachusetts’s biopharma funding landscape and R&D output in 2025, which released the same day as PwC’s.
The report, published by local trade group MassBio, offers a snapshot of the industry in one of the nation's premier biopharma hot spots.
Overall, the theme of the report was resilience, reflected in the fact that the state’s biopharma industry increased the volume of its drug pipeline by nearly 14% compared to 2024, even as venture capital reached its “lowest level in six years.”
Preclinical candidates made up the bulk of that gain, which outpaced the U.S.’ overall pipeline growth of 6.8% in 2025, according to the report.
Conversely, companies based in or with a significant presence in Massachusetts still rounded up 28 FDA approvals last year, MassBio noted. Throughout the course of 2025, the FDA approved 46 novel drugs and 18 new biological treatments, compared to 50 and 18 in 2024, respectively. Considering MassBio's numbers, Massachusetts-based companies contributed significantly to that tally of U.S. nods.
Still, the trade group’s report came with a stark warning about the pace of innovation among U.S. rivals, with China’s pipeline growing a staggering 37% last year, by MassBio’s tally.
That being said, key barometers of the industry’s health—venture capital, M&A activity and initial public offerings from biotech upstarts—seem to be pointing in a more positive direction after a rough start to 2025.
Overall, Massachusetts-headquartered companies lassoed up $6.85 billion—spread across 197 rounds—in VC dollars last year, which MassBio said reflects “a return to pre-pandemic funding levels and the industry’s recalibrating toward sustainable investment models.”
Further, M&A activity in the state “rebounded sharply” in the back half of 2025, with 36 Massachusetts biopharmas acquired for a total of $20 billion by the end of the year. The deals recorded in the latter half of the year more than doubled the number and value of acquisitions in 2025’s first half, the trade group pointed out.
That $20 billion figure is a sharp decline from the $42 billion in Massachusetts company acquisitions tallied in 2024, although that sum was due in part to “several oversized acquisitions,” MassBio caveated. Plus, the number of deals overall increased from 32 to 35 between 2024 and 2025, which MassBio suggested is “trending in the right direction.”
It was more difficult to find a silver lining around biopharma IPOs. Ultimately, just two Massachusetts company went public in 2025—one in the U.S. and the other on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange—compared with six in 2024, MassBio noted.
Despite signals of an industry rebound heading into 2026, drugmakers are still reckoning with several unknowns in the U.S., and the brunt of that burden will likely fall on smaller-scale innovators, MassBio’s report indicates.
The trade group cited survey results suggesting that policy uncertainty remains “the top concern of biopharma executives heading into the new year.” Namely, MassBio argued that “persistent regulatory instability disproportionately affects small biotechs with one or two drug candidates,” which they acknowledged form the “backbone” of the industry in Massachusetts.
Back in November, hundreds of industry leaders signed a letter to FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., emphasizing the importance of a predictable regulator and citing a survey that suggested biopharmas had become deeply concerned about the agency’s ability to function.
Throughout last year, the FDA missed multiple approval target dates, canceled meetings to discuss clinical plans with biotechs and suffered mass layoffs, plus a spate of prominent leadership departures, among other issues.