By Precision Oncology Consulting
The 2025 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress celebrated its 50th anniversary and once again confirmed why it remains the world’s leading platform for oncology innovation and collaboration.
With over 37,000 participants, 661 speakers, and 2,927 abstracts (including 112 late-breaking), this year’s meeting showcased how fast oncology is evolving toward data-driven, biomarker-guided, and AI-enabled care.
Our new AI-supported analysis distills the most clinically relevant trends across diagnostics and therapeutics, focusing on the studies most likely to influence treatment decisions, reimbursement pathways, and future evidence strategies.
Diagnostics & Biomarker Innovation
Across more than 60 diagnostic-focused abstracts that we’ve included in our analysis, several clear themes emerged; the maturity of ctDNA-based MRD testing, the clinical integration of multi-omic CGP, and the growing policy momentum behind national genomic strategies.
Natera (16 abstracts) reaffirmed its leadership in tumor-informed MRD through landmark trials such as IMvigor011 and CheckMate 274, where Signatera™ positivity predicted recurrence risk and treatment benefit.
Guardant Health (15 abstracts) presented robust real-world and interventional evidence supporting Guardant Reveal™ as a tumor-agnostic, plasma-only MRD test including decision-impact data in colorectal cancer that directly influenced adjuvant therapy choice.
Foundation Medicine (12 abstracts) demonstrated how DNA + RNA CGP improves detection of HRD signatures, resistance fusions (AR-V7, ESR1), and diagnostic precision in gliomas and rare tumors.
Tempus (6 abstracts) highlighted the power of AI and real-world multimodal data, using RNA-based molecular clustering to personalize therapy in renal and prostate cancers.
Bio-Rad (6 abstracts) showcased the clinical utility of digital PCR (ddPCR) for MRD quantification and pharmacodynamic monitoring emphasizing accessibility for hospital labs.
Together, these datasets mark the transition of liquid biopsy from technical validation to routine clinical decision-making, and of CGP from purely descriptive to clinically actionable profiling.
Therapeutics: A Year of Translational Milestones
On the therapeutic front, ESMO 2025 delivered multiple practice-changing data sets that reflect the convergence of diagnostics and treatment selection:
- ADCs such as trastuzumab deruxtecan (DESTINY-Breast05) and disitamab vedotin + toripalimab redefined standards in early breast and urothelial cancer, confirming survival benefit and expanding use into earlier lines.
- Immuno-oncology (IO) achieved the first overall survival signal in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer (KEYNOTE-B96) and demonstrated strong efficacy of bispecific or DDR-IO combinations (e.g., tarlatamab, ceralasertib + durvalumab) in SCLC.
- Targeted therapy advances included durable OS benefits with CDK4/6 inhibitors (monarchE, NATALEE), new radioligand and AKT-pathway strategies (Lu-PSMA-617, capivasertib + abiraterone), and the integration of local consolidative therapy with osimertinib in EGFR-mutant NSCLC.
- Even chemotherapy optimization (ICON8B) demonstrated that dose-dense paclitaxel plus bevacizumab still moves survival outcomes in high-risk ovarian cancer a reminder that precision does not exclude incremental innovation.
Policy, Access & Implementation
Beyond the science, ESMO 2025 featured a surge of policy and health-economics studies tackling how to make molecular testing sustainable within national systems. Data from Ireland and Canada supported reflex and parallel testing models that cut BRCA testing costs and turnaround times. France’s SEQOGEN study quantified the true cost of national whole-genome sequencing (WGS) integration (~€4,745 per case) and identified workforce and bioinformatics as main bottlenecks. Comparative analyses between NICE (UK) and HAS (France) highlighted how divergent HTA thresholds still create unequal access to targeted therapies across Europe. The overarching message: clinical validity is no longer the bottleneck, implementation, cost, and policy alignment are.
Emerging Trends Across ESMO 2025
- MRD maturity: Over 25 studies confirmed ctDNA and methylation-based MRD assays are moving into prospective, therapy-guiding workflows.
- Diagnostics–Therapeutics convergence: Biomarkers are now embedded in clinical trial design, not just exploratory endpoints.
- Policy acceleration: Public-private partnerships (e.g., CONNECT, France 2030) are turning precision oncology into a health-system priority.
- AI & real-world data: Platforms like Tempus Lens and Guardant INFINITY illustrate how multimodal analytics are shaping next-generation evidence.
(In our analysis, we’ve included only the companies for which data were readily accessible. If your organization presented at ESMO 2025 and would like to be featured in future updates, please get in touch — filtering on the congress website remains, let’s say, a bit of a challenge.)
Download the full PDF report — including company-level summaries, clinical highlights, and policy analyses:
