Every so often, a graphic like the one below will circulate throughout biopharma. I’ve found these to be helpful snapshots that can guide internal discussions on business development, go-to-market dynamics or general corporate strategy. It has been a while since I’ve seen a refreshed version on cell therapy, so I put together my own 2021 cell therapy landscape. My goal was to highlight key companies (both public and private) across a range of approaches in order to illustrate the degree of competition in the space.
Key Takeaways: A Crowded, Fast-Moving Space with Plenty of Investor Focus
The cell therapy revolution is in full swing – the number of companies racing towards approval on the back of new therapies, antigen targets and indications reaches new highs each year. All of that activity bodes well for patients, but certainly introduces new challenges for leadership at biopharmaceutical companies across the industry looking to avoid creating a “me too” product that the market does not want. Oddly, cell therapy feels crowded, just a few years removed from Kymriah’s breakthrough FDA approval.
That is not to say that every asset shown below will end up crossing the finish line. The evolution of drug discovery and development has trended in the opposite direction of Moore’s Law – that is, it has gotten more expensive and slower with each passing year. The vast majority of preclinical and Phase 1 assets will not enter pivotal trials or receive FDA approval, which does bode well for the companies that are capable of executing even with less sexy assets such as autologous CAR-T.
However, it’s clear that with so much robust science and outsized funding, investors are valuing companies that are leaders in differentiated approaches much higher than companies with deep pipelines of the “same old”. While the biotech public markets have gotten hammered YTD’2021, simply compare the valuation of Fate Therapeutics (~$5.8B), a leader in iPSC NK cell therapy with Phase 1 assets, vs. Autolus (~$430M), an autologous CAR-T company with several late-stage assets with great data. With so many options to choose from, investors are prioritizing companies with differentiated science, durable responses and off-the-shelf dosing capability, which, in turn, will drive down the cost of therapy and justify use in earlier treatment lines.
Considerations
- As noted in the top right of the graphic, this is by no means an exhaustive list of every cell therapy company in the market. Rather, I’ve selected a representative sample across diverse modalities and clinical phase.
- Similarly – the position of an asset within each phase does not imply how close that asset is to advancing to the next phase. The placement was done to ensure everything fit as cleanly as possible.
- If you would like to receive a PDF version of this graphic or if there are companies you would like me to add to the next version of this graphic, please email me at andrew@andrewpannu.com.