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.

Guardant Health presented new clinical data at this week’s American Association for Cancer Research conference and outlined its growth plans as cancer testing volumes recover after the pandemic.

New York-based health IT company Prognos recently secured $20.5m in Series C financing to build out its artificial intelligence capabilities, which it has applied to a giant diagnostic laboratory registry containing data from some 180 million patients. Given the shift to value-based health care and the high costs of treating chronic diseases, insurers might use information from this registry to predict the likelihood of disease and reach out to members to help head off illnesses. Pharma clients, in turn, can use the data to target physicians to help them deliver effective treatments.