PharmTech: Industry Outlook 2026- The Impact of Novel Therapies

Each year, as part of PharmTech’s preparation for the new year, the editors speak with experts in the industry to find out which trends happened in the past year that they think impacted the industry the most and will, they believe, continue into the new year. Campbell Bunce, chief scientific officer at Abzena, pointed to two trends in 2025 that stood out: the influx of novel therapies and onshoring of manufacturing facilities to the United States.

Next-generation biologics, such as bispecifics, fusion proteins, and multi-specifics, have multiple functionalities that provide “more bang for your buck in one molecule”. There have also been more approvals of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) in the past year, according to Bunce, which creates excitement in the industry.

“But one thing that’s particularly exciting, I would say, on the sort of drug type front, is antibody-oligo conjugates [AOCs],” Bunce says. “They’re particularly driven by companies like Avidity and Dyne, who are really spearheading these next generation by conjugates, where we’re using antibodies to target oligonucleotides into cells that will impact certain sort of disease inducing pathways. We’re seeing particular excitement around using these types of drugs for muscular dystrophies.”

Bunce points out Novartis’ acquisition of Avidity Biosciences, a biopharmaceutical company located in San Diego that focuses on drugs that enable RNA delivery to muscle, in October 2025 as an example of the excitement surrounding these therapies. Avidity is pioneering AOCs, according to Novartis, for genetic neuromuscular diseases and will provide programs to advance Novartis’ neuroscience strategy (1).

On the onshoring front, Bunce sees a shift toward manufacturing drugs closer to home. “Onshoring manufacturing capabilities in the US has been something that we’ve seen significant activity around,” Bunce explains. “Abzena built into the US some years ago, kind of deliberately as a deliberate promise to a shareholder base at the time, and we find ourselves really well positioned to sort of capture a lot of the benefits that we’re seeing in that sort of migration of manufacturing into the US, particularly around ADCs.”

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