IQVIA 2025 report sizes up trends in new drug launches, other areas

The IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science has released, Global Trends in R&D 2025 report, Progress in Recapturing Momentum in Biopharma Innovation, which assesses the trends in R&D funding, clinical trial activity and new drug approvals and launches. It also examines the efficiency and productivity of clinical development, using a refreshed Clinical Program Productivity Index.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Biopharma funding levels in the past year continued to increase following the post-pandemic rebound of 2023, with growth contributions coming from IPOs, follow-on funding and other public and private sources. Excluding the 2020 and 2021 heights seen during the pandemic, funding reached a 10-year high of $102 billion in 2024 — a substantial increase on the 2023 figure of $71 billion.
• In contrast, the volume of R&D deals between pharmaceutical companies declined in 2024, continuing the downward trend that began in 2022. More than half of the 1,016 deals made in 2024 were between emerging biopharma companies, with the majority of the remainder involving EBP deals with larger companies. Partnerships between larger companies remained relatively rare, accounting for just over one in 10 R&D deals. The volume of M&A deals also declined between 2023 and 2024, but the median value of these deals increased dramatically from $153 million to $405 million, with about half of the 2024 deals in the $1 billion to $5 billion range.

[Read more: IQVIA reports global market for medicines to rise to $1.9 trillion by 2027]

• Inter-trial intervals now typically account for 17 months of total development time across an R&D program; this figure has improved greatly since the 2022 peak of 32 months seen at the height of the pandemic.
• The total volume of clinical trial starts stabilized in 2024 after the year-on-year declines seen in 2022 and 2023, reaching 5,318 — a number remarkably similar to the 5,316 pre-pandemic count in 2019 and slightly above the 5,302 total of 2023. The short-term volatility introduced by COVID-19 trials since 2019 has been partly counterbalanced by increasing trials from China-headquartered companies and recent uplifts from EBP and larger companies, especially in Phase I.
• U.S.-headquartered companies continued to account for the majority of trial starts in 2024, increasing from a 33% share in 2023 to 35% in 2024. Despite the dramatic long-term increase in the contribution of China-headquartered companies to trial starts, their share of trial starts did not change between 2023 and 2024, remaining at 30% — but with more than 80% of these trials involving sites only in China. European companies accounted for a further 21% of trial starts in 2024, continuing the region’s gradual long-term decline in this metric. Oncology trial activity has increased the most since 2019 and remains the most prominent therapeutic area, with obesity trials also showing a dramatic recent increase.

[Read more: IQVIA reports medicine spending rose in 2021 due to COVID-19 vaccines, therapies]

• A total of 65 novel active substances launched globally in 2024, a decline on the 2023 figure of 80 but still higher than in the pre-pandemic period. The cohort of launches in 2024 included the first new mechanism of action in schizophrenia in over 30 years, the first therapy of metabolic dysfunction associated steatohepatitis, four treatments for rare neurological diseases and seven non-oncology hematology drugs — including two gene therapies.
• The United States was the most-common first-launch country. While 110 of the NAS launched in the United States since 2020 are not yet available in Europe, only 14 European launches are not yet available in the United States. Nearly 60% of new U.S. launches were first-in-class, including ten oncology medicines — of which two were cell therapies and three were bispecific antibodies. EBPs originated 85% of U.S. launches. More than three quarters of the 2024 drug cohort were launched more than 10 years after first patent filing, with a median interval of 14 years.
• Artificial intelligence is rapidly gaining traction in R&D. Companies with a core focus on AI or machine learning sponsored or collaborated on at least 35 new trial starts per year in 2022, 2023 and 2024, with their technology most commonly having contributed to the target or drug discovery activities behind the investigational study drug.

To read the full report, click here.