Cell and gene therapy investment, once booming, is now in a slump

>”So far this year, makers of cell and gene therapies have raised half of a billion dollars across 16 venture rounds, according to data from DealForma [published by Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-024-02357-2). Even annualized, those numbers are well below the $8.2 billion in funding brought in by the 121 deals DealForma counted during the sector’s peak in 2021. Last year, cell and gene therapy developers raised $3.5 billion across 65 deals.”

Maybe we are nearing the trough of disillusionment for cell and gene therapy.

>Six CAR-T cell therapies have been approved by U.S. regulators to treat cancer and, in some indications, their benefits can be dramatic. But hopes of replicating that success with so-called allogeneic therapies, which use donor cells rather than individual patients’, has been harder to come by than initially envisioned by investors. And uptake of some of the approved CAR-T therapies has been slow, especially as companies work through [manufacturing](https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/carvykti-johnson-johnson-legend-sales-multiple-myeloma/641199/) [bottlenecks](https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/bristol-myers-car-t-sales-abecma-breyanzi/628226/).

Allogenic stem cells would be great, but it seems so hard to create a stem cell line that would not elicit an immune response in a majority of patients while still having a therapeutic effect. I doubt it would happen [by 2035.](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/25636/allogeneic-cell-therapy-fda-approved-by-2035/)