Calling it a “year of dramatic impact for patients” Janet Lambert, the CEO of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM), gave the annual “State of the Industry” briefing today in San Francisco.

The briefing is a traditional kick-off event to mark JP Morgan week in the City, a time when hotel rooms go for $1,000 a night and just reserving a table in the lobby for meetings can set you back hundreds of dollars. Fortunately, the ARM briefing is free. And worth every penny.

Lambert ran down the numbers that highlighted how the field is growing and expanding:

• 987 companies world wide – most of those in the US
• 1,000 + clinical trials
• $9.8 billion in revenue/investments

Saying “for many of these patients these therapies don’t just bring improvements, they bring dramatic improvements” Lambert pointed out that when those 1,000 clinical trials are fully enrolled it will mean 60,000 patients getting stem cell and gene therapies. She says it’s estimated that in the coming years around half a million patients in the US alone will get one of those therapies.

More and more of the clinical trials are at advanced stages:

• 100 Phase 3
• 591 Phase 2
• 381 Phase 1

The biggest sector for clinical trials is cancer, but there are also substantial numbers for central nervous system therapies, muscular skeletal and even rare diseases.

Lambert said there are two key issues facing the field in the coming year. One is improving the industry’s manufacturing capability to ensure we are able to produce the cells needed to treat large numbers of patients. As evidence she cited the fact that Pfizer and Novartis are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in in-house manufacturing facilities. 

The second key issue is reimbursement, so that companies can get paid for delivering those treatments to patients.  “There is appetite and interest in this from people around the world, but right now most conversations about reimbursement are taking place one at a time. We haven’t yet evolved to the point where we have standard models to help get products to market and help them be commercially successful.”

The forecast for the year ahead? “Sunny with some clouds. 2019 was a year of significant growth and we enter 2020 with hopes of continued expansion, as we look to grow the impact on patients.”