Around 100 executives highlight the hot areas to watch on the R&D front in 2021. From cancer to CNS and from regenerative medicine to real world data, expectations are high on many fronts.

Executives expect the changes wrought by necessity in the face of a global pandemic to have lasting effects, both positive and negative, on the biopharma sector. Here they share their predictions for the coming year.

Initial public offerings by Norbert Bischofberger’s start-up as well as Spruce Biosciences and Shattuck Labs bring the US total to 64 in 2020. Also, the pipeline of health care SPACs is growing, Everest and Genor went public in Hong Kong, Idorsia leads recent follow-on offerings and Corbus cuts jobs.

Amicus announced its ambitions in gene therapy last year, recently purchased Celenex and 10 pipeline candidates, and now partners with Penn on gene therapies. Celltrion is collaborating with Emory in atherosclerosis therapies.