Deals
Trends

Deals Trends

Appetite for partnerships around cell and gene therapies has varied over the past few years. Gene therapies had attracted around $14.5bn deal dollars and 23 deals in 2021 across a variety of therapy areas, with Takeda showing hunger with a $2.7bn license with Poseida Therapeutics to develop gene therapies for liver- and hematopoietic stem cell (HSC)- directed indications and CSL’s $2.1bn license to uniQure’s Factor IX gene therapy, Hemgenix for haemophilia B. Deal volume dropped to eight in 2022, while total deal value reduced to $4.7bn, although sizeable deals were still made with Novartis’s partnering with Voyager Therapeutics for $1.8bn to use its adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsid discovery platform to develop gene therapies against CNS diseases. Voyager was at the heart of 2023 once again, outlicensing its GBA1 gene therapy programme for Parkinson’s disease and three gene therapy programmes targeting rare CNS targets for $1.7bn. Deal volume remained around seven with an increase in dollars spent to $8.7bn.

Figure 7: Total deal dollars spent in licenses and M&A for gene therapies (2021 – 2023)

Source: Evaluate Pharma

In contrast to gene therapies, oncology has been the priority for gene-modified therapies, with almost no other therapy area to call out (Figure 8). In 2022, there was a significant $18bn spent across eight deals largely driven by Roche’s $6.2bn license of Poseida Therapeutics’ CAR-T technology for haematological malignancies and BMS’s $3.1bn license to Century Therapeutic’s chimeric antigen receptor natural killer(CAR-NK) cell therapy, CNTY-104, for acute myeloid leukaemia. However, 2023 witnessed a significant drop in investment to $2.3bn for a similar deal volume, with the largest deal valued at just over $500m; Amgen’s use of TScan Therapeutic’s target discovery platform for T-cell therapies targeting Crohn’s disease. Although, 2024 shows a potential revival in multi-billion dollar partnerships with AbbVie investing £1.4bn in biotech Umojoa Biopharma to leverage its lentiviral gene delivery technology and the development of up to five CAR-T cell therapies, including UB-VV11 which is in Phase 1 for haematological malignancies.

Figure 8: Total deal dollars spent in licenses and M&A for gene-modified therapies
(2021 – 2024)

Source: Evaluate Pharma

Investment in partnerships within the cell therapy space has been fairly flat with total deal dollars hovering between $4bn and $6.8bn over the past few years. 2022 saw $6.8bn spent across 10 deals with Roche partnering with Jnana Therapeutics for $2bn to leverage its tsRAPID chemoproteomics platform to discover novel small molecule drugs targeting cancer, immune-mediated and neurological diseases. AstraZeneca led 2023 spending $2bn for Quell Therapeutics to use its multi-modular T-regulatory cell engineering platform to develop treatments for T1 diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease. Six deals were formed with $4.5bn spent.

Figure 9: Total deal dollars spent in licenses and M&A for cell therapies (2021 – 2024)

Source: Evaluate Pharma