Spotlight On: Big Pharma’s Big Bets on In Vivo Cell Therapy
Bristol Myers Squibb acquired Orbital Therapeutics for $1.5 billion to advance in vivo cell therapy for autoimmune diseases, with its lead program OTX-201 targeting autoreactive B cells and potentially starting clinical trials in 2026.
Gilead Sciences (Kite) acquired Interius BioTherapeutics for $350 million, entering the in vivo cell therapy space to address manufacturing and scalability challenges of traditional CAR-T therapies.
AbbVie acquired Capstan Therapeutics for up to $2.1 billion, focusing on in vivo cell engineering using RNA delivery via targeted lipid nanoparticles.
AstraZeneca acquired EsoBiotec for up to $1 billion to develop in vivo CAR-T cell therapies.
In vivo cell therapy aims to reprogram immune cells directly within the patient, eliminating the need for complex ex vivo manufacturing and potentially broadening access to treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancers.
The field is rapidly expanding, with increased funding and asset development, but still faces challenges such as product control, transduction variability, durability, and safety risks.