EPPICON 2025: Life Science Leaders Tackle Innovation Amid Growing Challenges

By Ritu Jha-

The life sciences industry’s top innovators gathered for EPPICON 2025 at the Crowne Plaza in Foster City, California, to discuss the future of biotech, digital health, diagnostics, and medtech. This year’s theme, “Life Science Innovation During Uncertain Times,” focused on how industry leaders are navigating challenges such as funding issues, geopolitical instability, and evolving workforce dynamics.

“If you look at the current healthcare and life sciences innovation, there are so many changes that are dynamic, like geopolitical funding budgets, figuring out the cash flow situation by biotechs, and skills that are available at an optimal cost,” said Hiranjith H., president of Entrepreneurs and Professionals in Partnership for Innovation in Healthcare (EPPIC). “Given all these scenarios, we felt it was essential to bring together the right people to discuss these issues and explore how they are addressing them.”

The conference also highlighted the rising influence of women in innovation. 

“When we reached out to people to put together panels for EPPICON 2025, we realized that there are leaders within the innovation space who are women, and they had a perspective to share,” Hiranjith explained. “It became an organic outcome of the process to have an all-women panel, which was very important for the audience to listen to.”

One major topic discussed was the Trump administration’s H-1B visa fee hike, which has raised concerns in the biotech sector.

 “Skill availability and maintaining those skill sets are important aspects. The biotech industry requires a highly skilled workforce,” Hiranjith said. “The visa programs are a way to bring skilled labor into the U.S. from across the globe. The fee hike will have implications in the short term. But we wanted to discuss how to address it in the medium and long term.”

Hiranjith expressed optimism about the future of the biotech industry despite these challenges.

“The biotech industry is facing challenges, but speakers at EPPICON spoke about hope and optimism,” he said. “There are technologies that are getting inducted into discovery, and AI is also getting into healthcare and life sciences. There are new funding models and partnerships that were discussed. The challenges are about skills, budget, policy changes, and geopolitics, but new models are evolving to keep the industry running and flourishing.”

The keynote address at EPPICON 2025 focused on the intersection of geopolitics and funding.

 “In the keynote, we touched upon how the funding scenario is shaping up, the U.S.-China dynamic, and the role of biotechs in drug development,” said Hiranjith. “We felt that having such a keynote to give a macro view of addressing these challenges was important to set the stage for the follow-up panels.”

Artificial intelligence’s growing role in biotech was another key theme. 

“AI will bring optimizations, efficiency improvements to healthcare and life sciences,” Hiranjith said. “In drug discovery, when quality data is fed to AI, an aggregation happens. AI systems can train on those data points and provide insights that might accelerate discovery.”

Venkatesh Moktali, director of product management at QIAGEN, spoke on the growing importance of data and AI in biotech. 

“Now the problem is, we generate all this data, but what do we do with it? How do we get insights from it? How do we make sense out of it?” Moktali said. “That’s where machine learning, AI, and all these models come into play.”

Moktali also addressed the disruption AI is causing in the pharma industry. 

“It’s completely disrupting the pharma industry. Most of the companies are in a very traditional model,” he said. “But now there are all these technologies, like digital twins, that are coming up. Europe has a mandate to move away from traditional models by 2030.”

Funding cuts by the U.S. government have posed challenges, but Moktali pointed out that AI-focused ventures are still attracting investment. 

“There is an overall funding challenge, but surprisingly, that has not affected AI ventures,” he said. “If you’re a startup working with AI as the primary engineering method, there’s a lot of funding.”

The event also highlighted India’s growing role in biotech innovation. 

“At EPPICON, we saw a lot of startups from India,” Moktali noted. “They are using AI as a tool set to change fundamentally how we address problems. Indian innovators are coming up with innovative ideas, and I think there will be state-wise efforts that will become more national.”

Ronjon Nag, an adjunct professor at Stanford University who is working on aging science, spoke about bridging AI and life sciences. 

“Right now, I’m working on a vaccine for aging. The idea is to train the immune system to stop proteins that go awry as we age,” Nag said. “We have to nip it in the bud and train the immune system to clear those cells at the earliest possible stages.”

Gaurav Aggarwal, managing director at VIVO Capital, discussed India’s potential to become a biotech accelerator. 

“There’s no shortage of incredible intellect and manufacturing capacity in India,” Aggarwal said. “But India’s biotech sector has been held back by cultural and legal issues. The shift is happening, but it’s not at the same scale as China. These challenges are fixable.”

Abhishek Jha, co-founder and CEO of Elucidata, emphasized the importance of data quality in AI models for drug discovery. 

“We focus on the quality of data fed into AI models,” Jha said. “As we grow, we are expanding our work to include clinical manufacturing and commercialization, with the goal of impacting every stage of the value chain.”

Jay Wales, senior manager at Piramal Pharma Solutions, discussed the increasing pressure on drug discovery. 

“A lot has changed in drug discovery. There’s a lot of pressure to complete the discovery stage faster, to get to the manufacturing stage and get approved drugs,” Wales said. “Our company is focused on helping get it there faster because our focus is to think about the patient at the end.”

Mihir Parikh of Nishith Desai Associates shared his insights on the future of health tech. 

“The goal is to understand what issues will come with future technologies and shape the future of law accordingly,” Parikh said. “Regenerative medicine is a step in the direction of extending our lives. Bioprinting organs, like a liver or heart, could allow us to live longer.”

EPPICON 2025 brought together experts, innovators, and entrepreneurs from around the world to explore the evolving landscape of life sciences and biotechnology, offering a platform for collaboration and future innovation.