Regenerative medicines global revenues down by 40% but ‘poised for growth’

A report​ published by the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM), reports that global revenues for the regenerative medicines reached $2.6bn (€2.32bn) in the first half of the year, a 38% decrease compared to the same period of 2018.

That figure includes companies in the booming cell and gene therapies market as well as companies focusing on tissue engineering.

Despite the decrease, due to ‘global market forces,’ industry experts are not worried, as the sector is poised for growth, according to Janet Lambert, CEO of ARM.

“As evident in the data, 2018 represented a watershed financial year for this sector, as numerous companies had significant IPOs and several blockbuster follow-on financings,” ​Lambert told Biopharma-Reporter, adding that the investment climate was robust, as numerous products came to market.

“However, in Q4 2018, we saw global market forces affect these financings,”​ and this has continued in 2019, Lambert added, commenting on the figures presented in the Q2 2019 report.

ARM’s CEO suggests that despite this slowdown in the public markets, financings from corporate partnership upfront payments as well as venture capital sources have been strong, “with mid-year 2019 data measuring already 50% or more of what we saw in full-year 2018.”​

“The sector is poised for additional growth, as a rich pipeline is producing positive data and numerous products expected to come to market in the very near-term,” ​Lambert told us.

Specifically, the pipeline is expected to significantly expand as the ongoing clinical trials for cell and gene therapies and tissue engineering worldwide were 1,069 at the close of the second quarter of 2019.

Out of those, 60% of the products in development are oncology treatments and 6% are being investigated for the treatment of central nervous system (CNS) disorders, according to ARM.

The report also showed that in Europe and Israel, 234 therapeutic developers have raised $1.3bn in the first half of 2019, demonstrating a 17% increase from 2018. There are currently 266 clinical trials underway sponsored by companies headquartered in Europe.

Regarding the development for treatments of rare disease, there were 562 ongoing gene therapy clinical trials, and $3.1bn has been raised to develop these therapies in the first half of 2019.