HSBC’s mid-year report signaled the challenges that many small and mid-sized biotech companies have shared; first financings declined in Q2 of 2025 and entrepreneurs and companies have had to make tough staffing decisions and adjust their pipelines and programs. While interest rates have started to lower, macroeconomic uncertainties remain in addition to the risk embedded in developing novel medicines. This session will begin with an overview of financing in 2025 followed by a discussion on how companies and investors have remained nimble. The role of venture capital and how family offices are participating in financing will also be featured.

Expansion in the target landscape, from TL1A and beyond, has accelerated progress in I&I drug development with multibillion-dollar M&A across the past two years attracting more funding for programs in this space.  This panel will explore the landscape of targets and indications showing the most promise to address unmet patient needs at large scale.

GLP-1 analogs have rewritten treatment standards and changed patients’ expectations related to obesity, yet even more tantalizing is growing evidence they could hold the key to broader improvements in cardiometabolic health and address other age-related diseases with implications for longevity R&D. This panel will highlight cellular and systemic approaches to elucidating the role of GLP-1 in multiple diseases associated with aging, discuss the clinical evidence that has generated excitement, and reveal how leaders in this nascent therapeutic area are approaching their pipelines.

More than a third of US licensing deals this year have involved assets sourced from China, as accelerating growth in such deals attracts investor attention and regulatory scrutiny. This panel will examine how competition is affecting asset valuations, how deals structures are evolving, and regulatory changes regarding cross-border clinical data security liabilities applicable not just to operators but investors also.

In a capital-constrained environment, Enveda distinguished itself by securing high-quality funding at a rapid clip—closing a $150M Series D in late 2025 to achieve "unicorn" status just five years after its seed round. In this fireside chat, UBS Senior Biotechnology Analyst Mike Yee sits down with CEO Viswa Colluru, PhD, to unpack the strategy behind Enveda’s outlier success. They will discuss how Enveda validated its platform to investors by moving faster than the industry average (from concept to clinic), how they secured backing from giants like Premji Invest and Sanofi, and how they are generating tangible value by using AI to analyze natural samples to advise candidate selection and enable three drugs in different indications to already reach clinical trials.