Areas of Innovation

We invest in key areas that will drive innovation within our pipeline for years to come.

The future is what we make it

We're focused on finding better ways to bring the right medicines to patients – tailoring and personalizing our therapies and letting the patient voice and experience guide us. We’re investing in key areas and technologies such as precision medicine, data convergence, genetics and genomics and patient-focused drug development.

We believe that innovation in these areas — along with our unique mix of therapeutic modalities and advanced tools — will drive innovation within our pipeline, advance programs with a stronger probability of success, and increase our potential to deliver better solutions to patients.


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Discovery Files:

The Eureka Moment Behind a Scientific Discovery

Discovery Files:

The Eureka Moment Behind a Scientific Discovery

We want to go after those bold goals, the things that no one else is attempting.

Tom Hudson, M.D.
SVP, R&D, Chief Scientific Officer, AbbVie

Areas of Innovation: At a Glance


Data convergence

We’re integrating historically distinct areas of expertise and technology into a unified knowledge platform, improving how we collect, analyze and apply data to spark insights that can improve patients’ lives.

Precision medicine

We’re using advanced technologies to help accelerate medicines and leveraging deep understanding of disease mechanisms to target the right patient with the right medicine at the right time.

Genetics and genomics

Through one of the largest genomics research efforts in the world, our goal is to build a greater understanding of disease biology and human data to better inform critical decisions in the journey to create medicines.

Patient-focused drug development

From partnering with patients to advance drug development to diversifying our clinical trials to harnessing real-world data, our scientists use novel approaches that apply patient insights to deliver products and solutions for conditions with great unmet need.

Therapeutic modalities

We turn to our R&D toolbox — a mix of traditional and cutting-edge modalities — to create the best compound for a specific target. These modalities include gene and cell therapies, antibody-drug conjugates, targeted protein degraders and more.

Advanced technologies

From early experimental work to progressing late-stage programs, we use advanced technologies end-to-end across R&D, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, genetic medicine delivery, cell generation therapies and more.

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