What happened in the Cell and Gene Therapy sector in 2017, and what should we be looking out for in 2018? Over 500 executives, investors, scientists and patient advocates gathered together yesterday to find out at the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM) State of the Industry Briefing in San Francisco, California.

ARM Chairman, Robert Preti, and ARM CEO, Janet Lynch Lambert, kicked off the session by discussing how 2017 marked an inflection point for the sector. They underscored the approval of three cell/gene therapies (see slide below) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a “bright and robust” future pipeline that should yield over 40 approved therapies in the next five years, and an improving regulatory environment that’s accelerating approvals of regenerative medicine therapies. This year alone, the FDA has granted 12 Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) designations through the 21^st Century Cures Act (see slide below for companies/products that received RMAT in 2017).

Next up was a snapshot of the clinical landscape highlighting a total of 946 ongoing clinical trials at the end of 2017, and their breakdown by disease (see chart below). Oncology (cancer) is the clear winner comprising over 50% of the trials while Cardiovascular (heart) took second with 8.6% and diseases of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) took third with 6.5%.

Lambert also gave a brief overview of finances in 2017 and listed some impressive numbers. $7.5 Billion in capital was raised in 2017 compared to $4.2 Billion in 2016. She also mentioned major acquisitions, mergers, partnerships and public financings that paved the way for this year’s successes in cell and gene therapy.

Lambert concluded that while there was significant progress with product approvals, growing public awareness of successes in the sector, regulatory advances and financial maturity, there is a need for further commercial support and a focus on policy making, industrialization and manufacturing.

The Industry Update was followed by two panel sessions.

The first panel focused on cell-based cancer immunotherapies and featured company leaders from Juno Therapeutics, Mustang Bio, Adaptimmune, Novartis, and Fate Therapeutics.

In the cancer field, companies are aggressively pursuing the development of cell-based immunotherapies including Chimeric Antigen Receptor T (CAR-T) cells, modified T-cells and Natural Killer (NK) cells, to name a few. These therapies all involve engineering or modifying human immune cells to identify and target cancer cells that resist first-line cancer treatments like radiation or chemotherapy.

The panelists spoke of a future that involved the development of combination therapies that partner cell-based immunotherapies with other drugs and treatments to better target specific types of cancer. They also spent a significant portion of the panel discussing the issues of manufacturing and reimbursement. On manufacturing, the panel argued that a centralized cell manufacturing approach will be needed to deliver safe products to patients. On reimbursement, they addressed the difficulty of finding a balance between pricing life-saving therapies and navigating reimbursements from insurance companies.

The second panel focused on the state of gene therapy and the outlook for 2018. This panel featured company and academic leaders from CRISPR Therapeutics, Sangamo Therapeutics, BioMarin Pharmaceutical, Adverum Biotechnologies, and the Gladstone Institutes.

The panel spoke about the difference between gene editing (fixing an existing gene within a cell) and gene therapy (adding a new gene into a cell) technologies and how the delivery of these therapies into tissues and cells is the biggest challenge in the area right now.

Sandy Macrae, President and CEO of Sangamo Therapeutics, made an interesting point when he said that for gene therapy to be successful, companies need to plan two to three years in advance for a phase III trial (the final stage before a product is approved) because manufacturing gene therapies takes a long time. He said the key for success is about having medicines that are ready to launch, not just reporting good results.

Overall, ARM’s State of the Industry provided an exciting overview of the progress made in the Cell and Gene Therapy Sector in 2017 and shared outlooks for 2018 and beyond.

You can access the Live Webcast of ARM’s State of the Industry Briefing including both panel sessions on the ARM website. Be sure to check out our blog featuring our 2018 Stem Cell Conference Guide for more ARM events and other relevant stem cell research meetings in the coming year.