Life Sciences Trends and the Outlook for 2025
The life sciences sector faces diverse challenges, from patent extensions and market definition shifts to rising mass tort claims and evolving M&A trends. Regulatory scrutiny is intensifying globally, while courts grapple with scientific claims and companies operate in cautiously optimistic economic conditions. Explore key trends, matter highlights and considerations for the life sciences sector heading into 2025.

Key Life Sciences Trends and Developments
- The European Court of Justice revisited market definition. Despite considering non-price competitive constraints, it emphasized that substitutability between drugs should be assessed using a price-elasticity of demand test.
- Mass tort claims against product manufacturers are increasing, driven by the ability of the plaintiffs’ bar to amass large numbers of claims, often exceeding tens or even hundreds of thousands of people on claims that push the envelope of existing law.
- Biotech M&A deals have risen, but average deal value has fallen. Despite positive signs, the public market remains sluggish – oncology, rare diseases, immunology and ophthalmology opportunities are most prominent.
The sector faces a range of diverse issues:
- U.S. law permits compounding pharmacies, though subject to less stringent FDA regulations, to fill supply gaps. However, some pharmacies’ attempts to exploit drug pricing during shortages has resulted in litigation.
- France has fined 11 companies up to €8 million for failing to hold four months’ stock of drugs at risk of shortages. Financial sanctions may increase in the 2025 Social Security Financing Bill.
- Regulations surrounding PFAS are evolving at federal and state levels, which is pertinent to mass tort litigation, and legal challenges to certain federal regulations have been filed.
- The EU’s texts governing medicinal products for human use are being overhauled and will form a new directive and a new regulation. Both are going through the EU legislative procedure.
Outlook for Life Sciences in 2025
Patent disputes increasingly pit innovator companies against each other. That is in addition to innovator versus generic or biosimilar drug company patent litigation paradigms provided for by statute. This trend appears set to accelerate. And as multiple companies often race for approval of new therapies, patent litigation has emerged as an important strategy to gain and preserve first-to-market exclusivity.
The pharmaceutical sector is under constant scrutiny. In January 2024, the European Commission counted no less than 26 decisions from 2018 to 2022 and 30 ongoing investigations across the EU. Most concern alleged abuses of dominance, with novel theories of harm emerging at the EU level, around patent misuse, vexatious litigation and disparagement. We expect these topics and other lifecycle management strategies, such as product hopping, to remain at the forefront of enforcement.
The highly organized, well-capitalized plaintiffs’ bar will continue to pursue novel scientific claims that test the limits in various mass tort areas. They have asserted claims, including in industries not traditionally the subject of product liability litigation, often based on questionable scientific evidence. It will be as important as ever for courts to examine carefully the underlying science in these actions to evaluate the claims being asserted.
Cautious optimism is the watchword for 2025, due to several factors: the effect of falling interest rates, the historically low valuations of biotech firms and the anticipation of a gradual reopening of the public market and a recovery in share prices.
Moreover, investors should be more inclined toward riskier opportunities. We could see an upturn in M&A and fundraising, and a more business-friendly economic environment.
Dechert secured the complete dismissal of claims against Delta Dental of California, including its directors and officers. The case challenged Delta’s business model and freedom to determine prices for dentists in its network. The California Dental Association, representing tens of thousands of dentists, sued alleging breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair competition. In October 2023, the court dismissed most claims, and in May 2024, it dismissed the remainder, with prejudice, finding Delta’s contractual rights remained intact and the defendants owed no fiduciary duties.
Dechert represented plaintiff Genzyme Corporation, a subsidiary of Sanofi SA, in patent infringement actions related to Novartis’ manufacture, sale, and use of Zolgensma, its gene therapy medication used to treat certain children with the muscle-wasting disease spinal muscular atrophy. The cutting-edge technology at issue involves the use of a genetically engineered virus to deliver a missing gene to patients. The patent infringement actions entailed assertion of seven Genzyme patents related to gene therapy technology, and the case resulted in a global settlement.
Dechert represents GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) as national counsel in multidistrict and state-court mass tort litigation across numerous jurisdictions. Plaintiffs allege GSK’s discontinued heartburn medication Zantac caused cancer. In California, Dechert led pretrial motions, strategy, and negotiations, resulting in confidential settlements in the first cases set for trial. In Illinois, Dechert played a key supporting role in the first Zantac case to go to trial nationwide, resulting in a defense verdict in May 2024. The firm reprised its role in a second case, securing another defense verdict in August 2024. Dechert also led extensive negotiations that culminated in GSK’s settlement of 93% of Zantac state court product liability cases (approximately 80,000 cases) in October 2024. Dechert continues to be GSK’s national counsel for the remaining Zantac cases.