Here's what everyone in the drug industry is talking about right now

Reuters

We're only one month into 2017, and yet there have already been a bunch of headlines focused on the healthcare sector. 

From the impact Donald Trump will have on the sector to increasing drug pricing (yes, that again), there has already been enough news to suggest that the industry is in for a big 2017. 

To get a sense of what else to expect in the year ahead, while at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in early January, we asked healthcare executives to identify the topics they expect to become a part of the national conversation. 

Here are seven main topics they said to keep an eye out for:

New Alzheimer's treatments

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

2016 was not a banner year for Alzheimer's drugs in development. There were four flops, including a key late-stage trial for solanezumab, which came out of research on the "amyloid hypothesis," or the idea that targeting beta amyloid deposits in the brain to clear them out was the way to go about treating the disease.

Right now, there are only four treatments that treat the symptoms of Alzheimer's, and on average about 99% of all drugs in clinical trials never actually make it to approval.

"We're praying for an Alzheimer's breakthrough," Opiant CEO Roger Crystal told Business Insider. Opiant is a biotech developing treatments for addiction and eating disorders.  

There are a handful of key trials that are wrapping up in 2017. If any of those goes well, they could be a step in the right direction. 

What Donald Trump will do with healthcare

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Drug companies had largely been bracing themselves for a different election result in the US.

When President Donald Trump was elected, biotechnology stocks rose 13.3% by the end of election week, as it was thought that a Clinton victory would have been negative for the sector.

That all took a major turn in January when Trump said at a press conference that drug companies are "getting away with murder," saying that the US should start bidding on drugs to bring prices down.  Pharma CEOs met with Trump on January 31, but Trump's exact policy plan for drug pricing still appears to be up in the air. 

Also up in the air is Trump's plan for the Affordable Care Act, which would impact drugmakers.

Corporate tax reform

Reuters

Corporate tax reform was one of the big issues healthcare CEOs brought up during the meeting with the president. 

"We're going to be lowering taxes, we're going to be getting rid of regulations that are unnecessary," Trump said. 

That could have a huge impact on the pharmaceutical industry. The healthcare sector has seen a number of so-called inversions, where companies merge with a foreign company and switch their tax domicile to a lower-tax jurisdiction in the process. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider