Recent news pages have been chock full of predictions for how the rest of the year will play out – that’s especially true of the life sciences industry. Will the surge in IPO volume continue into Q2? Are M&As about to pick up? Are ADCs still hot with VCs? Will the FDA survive RFK? And what about AI?

This alphabet soup is often served up at the J. P. Morgan Healthcare Conference – fittingly known as JPM – the world’s largest and most influential life sciences investment event, which took place earlier in January.

Soup aside, this year’s predictions are optimistic. Initial public offerings (IPOs) – where private companies first start selling shares to raise money – were up at the end of 2025 compared to the year before, and that trend is likely to continue into this year. Experts also expect mergers and acquisitions (M&As) to pick up this year as big pharma starts to hoover up late-stage assets to fill the void left by expiring patents. The number of licensing deals is increasing too, driven largely by US and European companies wanting to access the novel drugs that are now pouring out of China.

All these metrics point to a thawing of the long biotech winter that swept in to correct the spending frenzy early in the pandemic. This can only be good news for researchers: academia and industry share the same climate, and a winter in one sector is felt by the other. More money should mean more industry-sponsored projects, more cross-sector collaborations, and hopefully more jobs.

Does this actually help launch?

What does all this mean for researchers looking to spin out a new company? How much impact do these short- to medium-term market predictions have on scientists keen to leap the gap between academia and industry? I spoke to several founders that had gone through entrepreneurial programmes run by Cancer Research UK’s innovation arm, Cancer Research Horizons, and asked them how much market dynamics affected their decision to launch their start-ups.

They all gave similar answers: not that much.

The people I spoke to were certainly aware of the industry trends, but their biggest priority was validating their science. If they could do that, they would make it work regardless of the external factors. The market affected how fast they could fundraise, not whether they started at all. One founder said it took nine months to raise enough money to continue, after 60 investors said no.