The 2025 World Medical Innovation Forum brought together nearly 2,000 leaders from industry, investment, government, and academia to explore the breakthroughs reshaping healthcare.

Conversations spanned the future of care delivery, AI, oncology, neuroscience, and community health, highlighting both the challenges ahead and the transformative potential of new science and technology. The closing day of the Forum reflected a shared commitment to accelerating discovery and advancing patient care worldwide. 

First Look

The final day of the Forum opened with First Look, a fast-paced session of 18 rapid-fire presentations from Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham faculty innovators. Each eight-minute pitch highlighted market-ready science with strong commercial potential, spanning therapeutics, devices, diagnostics, and AI.

• Technologies presented include:
• A new target of granzyme K T cells to treat autoimmune diseases
• Using generative AI to simulate realistic clinical experiences for medical students around the world
• Noninvasive microscope to count and track white blood cells in vivo
• Closed-loop cell therapy to treat Type 1 Diabetes
• Differentiated approach to restore vaginal health in those with vaginal dysbiosis
• Simple, non-disruptive oxygen sensors
• Synthetic CAR T cell therapy for cancer treatment
• Gene-specific method of treating Rett Syndrome
• Neural stem cell therapy to treat diseases of the Enteric Nervous System
• Precision long-term therapies for vascular disease in children
• AI digital platform brain care score for preemptive, individualized healthcare
• New drug discovery for the blood/brain barrier
• AI interface to make predictive health advice based on biological age of face
• Clinical trial recording using AI
• Monoclonal antibody resistant checkpoint inhibitors
• Precision coagulation profiling
• Noninvasive prenatal genome sequencing
• Work in the “Dark Genome” for immunity in cancer

Watch First Look

First Look Award Presentation

Congratulations to the 2025 First Look Award recipients, Jeannie Lee MD, PhD, Phillip A. Sharp Chair, MGB Department of Molecular Biology and Michael Talkowski PhD, Director of the MGB Center for Genomic Medicine.

Lee presented an epigenetic approach that selectively reactivates the healthy MECP2 gene on the inactive X chromosome. Her lab studies X-Chromosome Inactivation (XCI) to understand how RNA interfaces with protein at each step of the XCI process and use that knowledge to developing treatments for human disorders. In proof-of-concept studies, their strategy reversed disease manifestations in animal models of Rett Syndrome, unlocking the potential for a genetic cure from within.

The Talkowski lab integrates molecular and computational genomics methods to study the genetic etiology of disorders affecting prenatal, neonatal, and early childhood development, as well as neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Talkowski presented a noninvasive fetal sequencing (NIFS) platform that eliminates the need for invasive procedures like amniocentesis to achieve high-resolution genetic testing. By capturing variants missed by standard noninvasive prenatal testing, NIFS represents a paradigm-shifting advance in maternal-fetal medicine with the potential to expand access to comprehensive screening worldwide.

Big Ideas

The 2025 Forum concluded with a capstone session unveiling the Big Ideas in Medicine, a collection of bold healthcare advances identified by more than 100 Mass General Brigham clinicians, researchers, scientists, and administrators. These ideas spotlight emerging breakthroughs and strategies with the potential to reshape the future of healthcare and transform patient care.

The Big Ideas span next-generation gene editing, new ways to modulate the immune system to protect brain health, reimagined funding models for biomedical research, AI-powered clinical tools, and more—each representing a transformative advance with the power to change lives.

“Our goal is to inspire and encourage clinicians, industry, investors and policymakers to consider these ideas as they collaboratively reimagine what healthcare could be in years ahead.” -Niyum Gandhi, CFO, MGB.

Read the Press Release
Watch the Big Ideas Panel

View a complete selection of the Forum’s videos on the World Medical Innovation Forum YouTube channel.