Precision medicine is driving more investment and seeing collaborations arise between smaller companies, with niche therapeutic focuses, and larger firms in the industry, suggested a report by Frost & Sullivan.
The report expects the global cell therapy market to reach $8.21bn (€7.24bn) by 2025 – representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.9% from 2017, which would make it the fastest growing sector in the regenerative medicine industry.
The market was estimated to be worth $2.7bn in 2017, which turned out to be a crucial year for the cell therapy space – seeing the approval of Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) and Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) that became the first, and thus far only, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T therapies approved on the market.
The investment seen in the US and Europe is also being matched, and potentially being surpassed, in developing pharma markets; Christophe Heinemann, transformation leader at Sanofi, told conference attendees recently that China has a greater number of patients in CAR-T trials compared with the US.
This is leading to partnership deals, which the report suggests is fuelling growth in the area, such as Novartis and Cellular Biomedicines Group teaming up on the manufacture of CAR-T treatments.
The report also suggests that companies’ willingness to utilise innovative payment models will support growth in the area.
Aarti Chitale, senior research analyst of transformational health with Frost & Sulivan, said, "Novartis and Gilead are among the first companies to adopt this pricing model for their ground-breaking CAR-T Cell therapies Kymriah and Yescarta, respectively.”
“In addition to innovative pricing models, pharma companies are also showing a preference for risk sharing and fast-to-market models in order to support the development of novel therapies," she continued.
A separate report by ResearchAndMarkets suggests that the CAR-T area will grow at a CAGR of 46% from 2017 to 2028 due to the number of companies investing in the space and the number of on-going trials.
Wider than CAR-T
Though CAR-T is one of the fastest growing segments of the market, there are other areas that are driving growth across the sector, including the development of stem cell therapies.
Improvements in cell culture techniques and the use of different stem cell approaches, such as adipose-derived stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), and induced pluripotent stem cells, is driving investment in the market.
The stem cell therapy market is currently the largest segment of the cell therapy market. As such, there are numerous cases of companies investing in the area; recently, Novo Nordisk has funded the build-out of its manufacturing capabilities in the area, by leasing facilities from Asterias.
The report also points towards the development of manufacturing technology as being one of the key reasons to anticipate growth in the area. This allowed Takeda’s Alofisel (darvadstrocel) to became the first allogeneic stem cell to be made available in Europe, last year.
