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Every winter, like Punxsutawney nobles, biotech’s many thought leaders gather for the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference to pick apart the year that was and prognosticate about the one to come. The consensus, in good markets and bad, is almost always cautious optimism for boom times ahead, a prediction that in recent years has had groundhog-level accuracy.

But after two years of steady decline, 2024 might finally prove them right. Biotech is on the upswing, driven by the rise of some headline-grabbing medicines, the advance of cutting-edge technologies, and a few reminders that big drug companies are still willing to pay billions of dollars for small ones.

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Here are three major themes that we expect to drive the news in 2024 and determine whether biotech’s comeback is a sustainable trend or an interest-rate phenomenon.

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