AI Adoption in Biopharma Causes Industry-Wide Ripple: An AAPS PharmSci 360 Recap

*Full transcript available below

The 2025 AAPS PharmSci 360 conference, held Nov. 9–12 in San Antonio, Texas, highlighted dramatic shifts underway within the biopharmaceutical industry—chief among them, the rapid ascendancy of artificial intelligence (AI) in drug discovery, manufacturing, and employee skillsets.

How is AI transforming drug discovery and manufacturing in biopharma?

Experts at the conference emphasized AI’s profound impact across biopharmaceutical research and operations. Siddhant Sojitra, associate scientist II, Injectable Drug Product Development, Alexion Pharmaceuticals says, “I use AI tools to summarize bulk information, find relevant answers from large databases, and even optimiz[e] studies in such a way that we can get maximum output using minimum lab resources.” His comment illustrates how AI streamlines data analysis and resource allocation, reducing costs and accelerating timelines.

AI is also revolutionizing manufacturing processes. “The reality of how AI is being leveraged to identify patterns and make predictions that are far beyond human capacity has already accelerated drug development,” says Sara Underwood, senior pharmacokineticist at Alturas Analytics. Technologies such as digital twins now allow scientists to simulate production strategies virtually, minimizing material waste, she remarks.

What are organizations doing about an industry-wide gap in technical skills?

Beyond technology, the conference spotlighted a widening skills gap as digitalization proliferates technical roles. Experts called for organizations to prioritize cross-training and interdisciplinary collaboration—integrating clinicians, engineers, and data scientists—to maximize AI’s industry potential.

As partnerships with AI leaders proliferate, such as collaborations with OpenAI to improve clinical trials and product development, the biopharma industry is collectively bracing for even more rapid advances. With next year’s conference already highly anticipated, the conversation around AI’s transformative power in biopharma shows no sign of slowing down, experts express.

Click here for all our conference coverage.

Transcript

Editor's note: This transcript is a direct, unedited rendering of the original audio/video content. It may contain errors, informal language, or omissions as spoken in the original recording.

Feliza Mirasol Welcome to BioPharm International's recap of the 2025 AAPs farm SCI 360 conference held in San Antonio, Texas this past November, 9 to 12th. I'm feliza miersal with BioPharm International, and this year's event drew in attendees from all walks of science, from industry to academia, and highlighted major themes such as AI gene therapy development and top research breakthroughs, among others. Our editors have a chance to catch up with industry experts to gain their perspectives on two of the industry's hot button issues today, the ongoing digitalization of the biopharmaceutical industry and the widening skills gap being created as a result, on the role that AI and digital technologies play in pushing forward drug discovery and manufacturing efficiency. Here's what experts had to say. Like

Speaker 1 on personal level, I use AI tools to summarize bulk information, find relevant answers from large database, and even optimizing studies in such a way that we can get maximum output using minimum lab resources.

Speaker 2 Where I've seen AI really start to take a foothold in the industry is on a couple of fronts. First one will be just raw R and D. Drug Discovery. The old way of doing drug discovery is, you know, you get an idea as far as a drug, you know, a drug, some drug chemistry, and usually that's informed by current drugs in the market, will give you some idea of a direction to go for development.

Speaker 3 In my opinion, whether or not you think AI is just a fancy writing assistant or hype, the reality of how AI is being leveraged to identify patterns and make predictions that are far beyond human capacity has already accelerated drug development. So in manufacturing, specifically, AI is being utilized to improve process optimization and scale up and analyzing batch data to predict optimal conditions for larger scale ups. So I also think the concept of digital twins is now a reality, where scientists can run through a virtual replica to find the best production strategy without wasting material

Feliza Mirasol and on the widening skills gap created by the rapid digitalization of technical roles. Here's what experts had to say.

Speaker 4 So I would say, as trainee myself in my PhD degree, I would say I personally have benefited a lot from this cross training and a very interdisciplinary team, where in our lab, we work with clinicians, engineers, computer scientists all the time, like we all work together. So I think this experience really have helped me understand how to speak each other's language and how to really bring all the different expertise together to drive our research forward.

Speaker 5 So what organizations can do is give the tools to their employees to leverage some of these AI tools that are popping up right now in a rapid manner. For example, like our organization recently announced a partnership with open AI to be able to leverage these types of tools to speed up product development, both in terms of accelerating clinical trials as part of our clinical trial offering, as well as operations, as well as other aspects of what we do as an organization. Well,

Feliza Mirasol that's all from us here at BioPharm International. Check out our full conference coverage of AAPs farm site, 360 on BioPharm international.com and our sister publication, farm tech.com thank you for watching, and we look forward to next year's show you.