Pharma's Almanac Article: Facilitating the Commercialization of Disruptive Industrial Life Science Technologies
> BY DANIELLA KRANJAC and GUSTAVO MAHLER, Ph.D., DYNAMK CAPITAL
Life science entrepreneurs with highly disruptive, market-defining technologies have long struggled to secure the right mix of capital and expertise. Dynamk addresses this gap with technical, strategic, and commercial experience to help these companies realize their full potential.
Real Growth Opportunities for Next-Gen Medicines
Biologic drugs are attracting increasing attention. These large-molecule treatments, particularly newer, more complex antibody and cell and gene-based therapies, are often highly targeted to the site of action, providing reduced side effects compared with systemic, small molecule drugs. In addition, they can often be engineered to impact genetically driven disease pathways associated with specific patient populations.
As a result, approximately 40% of pharmaceutical pipeline candidates — upwards of 5,000 biomolecules — are biopharmaceuticals, and over 1,500 of those candidates are undergoing clinical trials. At this rate, it has been estimated that, by 2022, half of the top-selling 100 drug products will be biologics, and they will account for approximately 30% of the value of the prescription drug market. Consequently, the value of the global biopharmaceutical market is thought to be expanding at an annual growth rate ranging from 8%–14% and is predicted to reach a value of $400 to $500 billion by 2024–2025.
Contributing significantly to this growth are next-generation, highly targeted but complex biopharmaceuticals, including bi- and multispecific antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, viral vectors and plasmid DNA, RNA-based treatments, and cell and gene therapies. The global market for next-generation antibodies is predicted to reach $17 billion by 2023, while the global market for viral vector and plasmid DNA products is believed to be expanding at a CAGR of over 20% and could surpass $1 billion in value by 2023.9
The global market for cell and gene therapies, meanwhile, is expected to be valued at more than $6.6 billion by 202410 and nearly $9 billion by 2025. That translates to an absolute value of growth of approximately 270% over the forecast period and will be due to the approval of 10–20 new products each year through 2025.10 The U.S. FDA alone is anticipating more than 200 IND applications for cell and gene therapies over the next few years. The Alliance for Regenerative Medicine indicated in its State of the Industry 2020 Report that companies active in gene and cell therapies and other regenerative medicines raised more than $9.8 billion in global financing in 2019. There were 1,066 clinical trials underway worldwide at the close of the third quarter of 2019.