No matter the market environment, you’ll always find entertainment in the biotech space. There will always be biotech stocks making huge swings in both directions and these stocks can make or break your portfolio in a very small amount of time due to the nature of how important clinical trial results are for these companies.
The United Nations forecasts that the over-65 age group will grow by 150% from 800 million in 2024 to 2 billion by 2067. This “older, richer & sicker” population is expected to push global healthcare spending on medicines up 12% to $2.3 trillion by 2028. If you combine that with AI making breakthroughs in healthcare more frequent, you’ll see many more biotech stocks starting to pop to the upside over the coming years.
So far into 2025, here are 15 that have done just that. More gains could come if the positive news driving these stocks sticks around.
Scientist in a lab working on a research project, focusing on biotechnology and healthcare advancements.
Methodology
For this article, I screened the top-performing biotech stocks year-to-date.
I will also mention the number of hedge fund investors in these stocks. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
15. Vigil Neuroscience Inc (NASDAQ:VIGL)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 18
Vigil Neuroscience Inc (NASDAQ:VIGL) is a biotech company that makes treatments for rare and common neurodegenerative diseases by restoring the vigilance of microglia, the sentinel immune cells of the brain.
The stock is up significantly so far in 2025 in anticipation of upcoming clinical trial data readouts in the first half of 2025.
It already reported positive Phase 1 clinical trial data for VG-3927 (small molecule TREM2 agonist) for Alzheimer’s disease. Plus, a final analysis from the IGNITE Phase 2 clinical trial evaluating iluzanebart in adult-onset leukoencephalopathy with axonal spheroids and pigmented glia (ALSP) is planned for Q2 2025.
In addition, it surged following announcements about promising progress in clinical trials for Alzheimer’s and ALSP in January.
The consensus price target of $19.75 implies 699.6% upside.
VIGL is up 45% year-to-date.
14. SpringWorks Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:SWTX)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 40
SpringWorks Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:SWTX) is a biopharma company making medicines for people with severe rare diseases and cancer.
The stock is up significantly so far in 2025 due to advanced acquisition talks with Merck KGaA.
Furthermore, on February 11, 2025, the FDA approved GOMEKLI™ (mirdametinib), SpringWorks’ MEK inhibitor, for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients 2 years and older with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) who have symptomatic plexiform neurofibromas (PN) not amenable to complete resection.
With the above approval, SpringWorks was granted a rare pediatric disease priority review voucher (PRV) by the FDA.
The consensus price target of $73.2 implies 37.05% upside.
SWTX is up 47.80% year-to-date.
