Throughout the 44^th annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, held from January 12-15 in San Francisco, a clear narrative emerged.

The major biotech and pharmaceutical companies are preparing for the looming patent cliff with a clear focus on expanding their pipelines. The major companies all used their presentations to send a clear message to investors: there are new blockbuster drugs coming by 2030.

What did pharma leaders discuss at the 2026 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference?

During Merck’s presentation, chairman and CEO Rob Davis spoke about the company’s development slate, explaining, “We have 80 phase three studies underway, we're commercially succeeding, and launching the first wave of the next 20 growth drivers. We're augmenting that through business development, and the success in progress we've had to date now puts us in a position where we see visibility to more than $70 billion of commercial opportunity as we look out to the mid-2030’s. Importantly, over the next two years we're going to meaningfully and from a clinical perspective de-risk that opportunity. My confidence is high and it continues to grow.”

Meanwhile, Eli Lilly’s chairman and CEO David A. Ricks spoke about the company’s success with DTC sales through its online platform LillyDirect.

“We scaled this direct platform to consumers which has been a success,” he said. “Basically, a million people a month go online and buy GLP-1 medicine directly from a drug manufacturer. Two years ago that would have sounded like a crazy idea. Viles on LillyDirect are basically the second top selling obesity drug next to Lilly Zepbound in an auto injector, and that's a profound achievement in one year.”

How do pharma leaders prepare for the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference?

Pharmaceutical Executive spoke with Ken Keller, US CEO and head of global oncology at Daiichi Sankyo, during the conference. When asked about what he expected and planned for heading into this year’s conference, he said he was focused on the various meetings he would get to make.

“There are two aspects,” he explained. “The first is getting to talk to people and sharing Daiichi Sankyo’s story. Number two, it is the meeting for the year where you get to connect with everyone else in the ecosystem. For us, we meet with large companies in terms of partnerships. More importantly, we meet with small, emerging biotech companies and really look for ways to partner and work together to bring new medicines to patients. In the three or four days that we’re here, we meet with more people than we meet with for the entire rest of the year. It’s an amazing week.”

Similarly, Jeff Liter, CEO of Luminary Therapeutics, explained the importance of remembering to focus on the science at the investor-themed meeting.

“As a company, we generally lead with science in the approaches that we take. For us, we ask if we can demonstrate that the science has clinical outcomes. Going into JP Morgan this year, we have nine patients under our belt.”

He continued, “The one downer for the whole biotech market is the uncertainty of NIH funding, especially for companies and research institutions that really rely on that for early development. There’s a fair amount of industrial enthusiasm that pharma is going to step up and buy additional assets. The feel for US biotech companies is how to compete with China, who is iterating faster than the US.”

Ahead of her presentation at JP Morgan, Pharmaceutical Technology spoke with Dr. Jennifer Levin Carter, MD, founder and CEO of Medzown, about the status of personalized vs. precision medicine.

“Precision medicine is understanding the data and biology that drives disease,” she explained. “The initial focus on this was in oncology. If we look at the advancements in oncology over the past 15 years, they've been profound with the use of genetics and genomics to identify biological factors in patients’ tumors that have driven the development of targeted therapies and immunotherapies that have transformed the treatment of patients with cancer. Now, even deeper information on genetics has allowed us to develop gene therapies and other treatments that are transformative for rare diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, and autoimmune disease.”

Did AI have a presence at the 2026 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference?

Michelle Longmire, CEO and co-founder of Medable, also spoke with Pharmaceutical Technology ahead of her company’s conference presentation. Not surprisingly, the topic of AI and automation played a significant part of her answer.

She said, “We're really focused on the fact that 80–90% of clinical trials are manual, and that, in our opinion, this is a big reason why we haven't changed the number of drugs approved in a year, no matter how much technology we throw at this. Because you're only really previously looking at 10–20% of where you could apply technology. Now with agentic AI, we can remove that tactical overhead. We can actually do many more complex things with AI that were formerly only able to be done by humans. We've released agents that essentially autonomously do significant parts of the work to enable humans to do more strategic work and remove that manual bottleneck.”

In a conversation with Pharmaceutical Executive prior to the conference, Trialynx CEO Angela Schwab discussed how pharmaceutical and biotech AI companies could stand out at the conference. According to her, “In 2025, we saw a lot of AI hype, with claims of using AI for everything and it solving all our problems. The disillusionment has set in, however, and to get out of AI what we really want, you must have a massive amount of prompting and back-and-forth conversations. With that, it still hallucinates.”

She continued, “The companies that are standing out are the ones with the deep, domain knowledge and are building processes into the AI step-by-step. No matter where they are, whether it’s the clinical-trial or life sciences landscape, they have that deep, domain knowledge to break apart all of the pieces of information and build it in a structured way where teams really succeed.”

Ahead of the conference, Michael De Marco, PhD, vice president of commercial development of integrated biologics at Lonza, spoke with Biopharm International, where he accurately predicted the tone of the conference.

“The main purpose we’re there is to meet clients, but also to learn more about the market competition,” he said. “Just thinking about the growing industry, the geopolitical situation, and changes in in the supply strategy to more regional strategies, I expect we will hear about announcements and capacity for manufacturing and research. I'm also expecting announcements of new partnerships and acquisitions, along with some rumors.”

He continued, “Many of our biotech clients and other companies in the industry are getting more mature in their clinical journeys. I'm expecting also some updates on potential launches.”

What were the largest mergers and acquisitions announced at the 2026 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference?

Despite the pre-conference buzz, this year’s JPM conference lacked any mega-deals or blockbusters. However, there were a few notable M&A announcements during the conference:

• Boston Scientific expanded its vascular and neurovascular device portfolio with the acquisition of Penumbra in a cash and stock transaction of approximately $14.5 billion.
• AbbVie reached a $5.6 billion licensing agreement to develop, manufacture, and commercialize RemeGen’s bispecific antibody drug RC148 for the treatment of advanced solid tumors.
• Novartis struck a $1.6 billion licensing agreement with SciNeuro Pharmaceuticals for de novo amyloid beta antibody drug candidates for Alzheimer’s disease.
• In another deal, Novartis entered into a $50 million worldwide license agreement with Zonsen PepLib Biotech for global rights to a peptide-based radioligand medication for oncology.

What happens after the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference?

While the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference kicks off the new year, many executives in the industry say that the most important stuff is what follows the conference.

As Keller explained, “What happens here is the start. These are times when you meet new companies and learn about new technologies. We’re here to make those connections and to find ways to work together to help each other. What typically happens here is this is the time you make those connections, and then later we follow up on them. At JP Morgan, we may see 30-40 people that we haven’t met before. Maybe 25 will never become anything. If just a handful of those connections lead to something we can work on together, that’s what it’s all about.”