PharmTech Weekly News Roundup – Week of November 3, 2025

In this PharmTech video feature, we highlight the week’s industry news in an easy-to-consume, fun format. New roundups will drop every Friday, so be sure to come back each week.

Two major themes cut across the week’s news: the profound integration of advanced technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the complexity of the modern pharmaceutical business landscape, characterized by intense competition and regulatory uncertainty.

The AAPS PharmSci 360 2025 (AAPS) annual meeting, held Nov 9-12 in San Antonio, will center on the transformative role of AI, highlighting its integration into every facet of bio/pharmaceutical research, including basic discovery, analytics, formulation, and manufacturing. Cutting-edge topics like AI-designed drugs, spatial transcriptomics, and gene therapy progress will also be featured at this essential platform for pharmaceutical innovation.

Ahead of his presentation at AAPS, Steve Lowes, senior director of Scientific Affairs at IQVIA Laboratories, tells us that liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) is becoming the preferred tool for bioanalysis of complex molecules like protein-based biologic drugs and oligonucleotide therapeutics, offering benefits over traditional ligand binding assays. This shift occurs as LC–MS actively addresses past sensitivity challenges and helps mitigate issues related to critical reagents used in immunoassays.

The pharmaceutical landscape is currently defined by significant regulatory uncertainty, stemming from an accelerating loss of expertise and a fractious organizational structure within the FDA’s vaccine center, according to our latest Behind the Headlines episode. Intense corporate battles dominate the lucrative obesity drug market, exemplified by major lawsuits and massive revenue guidance increases for key industry players.

In a video interview, Long Yuan, PhD, director of the Department of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics at Biogen, explains that AI, machine learning, and large language models are poised to significantly enhance bioanalysis, promising improvements in quality, efficiency, compliance, and reduced human errors. These technologies are utilized to automate tasks, predict optimal assay conditions for method development, and streamline the entire biomedical workflow, including data processing and report generation.

Among the top news of the week is the planned acquisition of Kenvue by Kimberly-Clark for approximately $48.7 billion, which underscores the convergence of consumer health and pharmaceutical markets. This deal necessitates reviews of supply chain resilience, may influence regulatory risk tolerance due to ongoing Tylenol litigation, and could lead to manufacturing footprint consolidation.