You could be forgiven for almost missing two new biotech surveys conducted by ICON, the clinical research organization. Having initially surveyed small and mid-sized pharma and biotech companies in 2023, ICON repeated the survey of 163 biotech/pharma companies worldwide in mid-year 2025 (1). Simultaneously, it conducted a survey of 100 China biotech companies (2), asking the same questions to give an unparalleled global view of the industry. The results were published this month in December 2025 and show many similarities.
In both surveys, which were polled after the tariff cuts in April 2025, ICON found that geopolitical uncertainty has almost doubled since 2023, up from 26% to a majority 53% in 2025. This was echoed by a similar surge in concerns about funding, which soared unsurprisingly from 38% up to 53% in 2025.
Despite these sentiments, the majority of companies are either very confident or somewhat confident about meeting their next investment milestones putting some optimism on the horizon for 2026.
Neurology (up to 44% from 32% in 2023) has overtaken oncology (30% down from 42%) as the most cited most active therapeutic area in their organisation. Both cardiovascular (39% from 29%) and immune diseases (32% from 22%) have also soared to second and third place in the survey.
Source: ICON (December 9 2025)
Cell therapies are the most popular modalities in the pipeline in both surveys, over 50% of the Chinese companies’ pipelines (53%) but far less of the worldwide biotech companies’ pipelines (40%). Similarly, microbiome therapies are more common among Chinese firms (45%) than among firms worldwide (31%). In the case of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), these are more popular among the China-only survey respondents (39%) than companies in the worldwide survey (31%).
The survey in China polled 100 biotechs and small to mid-sized pharma in China with the same questions as the global survey. With high levels of government funding, China has overtaken the US with over 1500 new drugs in development and conducts a quarter of all clinical trials and drug development. The survey finds that the challenges that China-based biotechs face align with their global counterparts, most notably funding, and the complexity of drug development and related regulations.
Substantially more Chinese biotech firms receive government grants/public funding (36%) and the highest percentage in each survey cited large pharma partnerships as a source of funding, but this was a larger percentage (59%) in the Chinese-only survey compared to the worldwide survey (52%).
R&D spending appears to be on the rise in the short term for both groups of respondents. Over the next one to two years, three-quarters of biotech companies in the worldwide survey plan to increase their R&D spending. This uplift to 75% of global companies planning an increase is outpaced by the huge 83% response from China-based respondents who plan to increase their spend on R&D in the next 1-2 years.
Respondents were asked to reveal what is the most significant barrier to innovation within their organisation, and c-suite cost management (34%) and lack of leadership buy-in to adopt new technologies and processes (9%) were also joined by talent concerns, lack of skillset (23%) and existing workforce being too stretched (21%).
Source: ICON (December 9 2025)
With optimism on the horizon, and increases in R&D spending forecast, now is the time to plan your impact on the biotech and pharma audiences. The Scott Partnership can help with targeted marketing, digital lead gen including PPC (Google and Bing) and LinkedIn support. Contact us to discuss your plans for 2026.
References
(1) https://www.iconplc.com/sectors/biotech/2025-biotech-survey-report
(2) https://www.iconplc.com/sectors/biotech/2025-china-biotech-survey-report