AI is moving quickly from experimentation to practical adoption across life sciences. The opportunity is real, but so is the noise. Predictive AI, generative AI, agentic systems, AI co-scientists, foundation models, digital biomarkers and workflow automation are all competing for attention, investment and partnership dollars. For innovators and pharma R&D leaders, the key question is no longer whether AI will matter. It is which capabilities will become embedded in the way medicines are discovered and developed, and which will remain temporary hype.
Johnson & Johnson invites external innovators, investors, academic leaders and ecosystem partners to an afternoon discussion in Basel on what will make AI stick in pharma R&D. The program will examine where AI is already showing durable value, where expectations may be running ahead of evidence, and how external innovators can build capabilities that are differentiated, scalable and relevant to real R&D needs.
The discussion will focus especially on intelligent and agentic AI: systems that move beyond generating outputs toward supporting scientific reasoning, orchestrating workflows, planning experiments, analyzing results and helping teams move faster from data to insight. Rather than treating AI as a generic productivity layer, the program will ask where AI can become part of the operating model for drug discovery and development, from target identification and validation to biomarker discovery, endpoint development, therapeutic design, clinical development and regulatory workflows.
Basel provides a strong setting for this conversation. The activation is planned alongside BioTechX Europe, bringing together a large community of data, AI, genomics and pharma stakeholders already present in the city.
If you are working on AI, data science or digital health capabilities with potential to transform drug discovery and development, we invite you to join the conversation and connect with Johnson & Johnson leaders and the Basel life sciences innovation community.
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- Guillaume Breton | Senior Director, Clinical & Statistical Programming | Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine R&D
- Felix Baldauf-Lenschen | CEO | Altis Labs
Iris Marechal | CEO | Theremia Health
- Caoimhe Vallely-Gilroy | Managing Director and Head of Content | health.tech global summit & Director Healthtech Strategy & Pharma | DayOne (invited)
- Paul Ashley (moderator) | Director External Innovation for Data, Data Science & AI, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine R&D
Felix Baldauf-Lenschen is the Founder and CEO of Altis Labs, the AI endpoint company accelerating clinical trials. Felix founded Altis on the premise that AI's greatest potential lies in generating better evidence, faster. In close partnership with leading cancer centers, his team trained IPRO, its prognostic AI model, on longitudinal imaging, clinical, and outcomes data spanning over 500,000 cancer patient years. When used as an outcome measure in Phase I-III oncology trials, IPRO detects treatment effects earlier and more reliably than conventional imaging endpoints, helping drug developers bring the most effective new treatments to patients sooner.
In his role Guillaume leads global teams supporting late‑stage development and regulatory submissions across a broad oncology portfolio. He joined J&J in 2024 and brings more than 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, spanning CRO and large biopharma environments.
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Before joining Johnson & Johnson, Guillaume spent many years at Novartis in Basel, where he held senior leadership roles and built high‑performing statistical programming organizations supporting global clinical development. His expertise includes oncology development, regulatory submissions, vendor and FSP oversight, and large‑scale operational transformation.
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Guillaume is passionate about people‑centric leadership, innovation, and the responsible adoption of digital and AI‑enabled solutions to increase efficiency and scientific value in clinical development.
Paul is based at the J&J London Innovation Centre. In this role, he is responsible for the development and maintenance of Data, Digital and AI relevant partnerships and business opportunities with biotech/TechBio companies, venture capital, academic, and governmental institutions. Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson Innovation, he was Head of Licensing and Ventures at Oxford University Innovation and has previously worked in a business development role at AstraZeneca and as the CEO of a spinout company based on technology developed at the UK’s Defence Science Technology Laboratory. Paulholds a BSc Hons in Zoology, a PhD in behaviour and physiology and conducted post-doc research in neurophysiology.
Iris Maréchal is co-founder and CEO of Theremia, an AI decision-support platform for CNS drug development. Theremia combines a pharmacological knowledge graph with causal machine learning trained on over a million longitudinal patient records to predict who responds to a treatment, why, and at what dose.
Caoimhe Vallely is currently serving as the co-Managing Director at health.tech events GmbH, Europe’s largest health tech focused summit, and as Director of Healthtech strategy and Pharma at DayOne by Basel Area Business and Innovation. With a background in pharmaceutical development and health tech innovation, Caoimhe leverages her industry experience to provide an environment for health innovators to collaborate in advancing healthtech solutions that bridge the gap between emerging technology and clinical application, improving industry outcomes.
Michael establishes collaborations and partnerships with researchers, healthcare entrepreneurs and life science companies in Switzerland, Austria and Italy, on behalf of J&J. He is on the Johnson & Johnson Switzerland Leadership Team and he advises startups as a member of the board of Swiss Healthcare Licensing Group and of the BaseLaunch accelerator.
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Prior to joining J&J, Michael was Global Business Development and Licensing Manager at Roche, he worked as an EMBO fellow and DAAD scholar at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (USA) and he earned a PhD at European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, Germany).
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