Cell therapies are among the most researched treatment types for blood cancer and the product pipeline is oversaturated, with GlobalData revealing that there are over 800 products currently in development for just five major blood cancers*. The leading data and analytics company warns that the blood cancer market will not be able to sustain this many products, even if they all meet regulatory requirements.

Sakis Paliouras, PhD, Managing Oncology & Hematology Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Cell therapies have seen some strong successes in the oncology market, with Gilead’s Yescarta and Novartis’ Kymriah paving the way for other developers to build upon the success of their chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CAR-T) cells. However, this success has brought about an abundance of products in development. Oncology is unlike other therapy areas such as cardiology or immunology, where the commercialization of a large number of products with similar attributes is the norm. If all of the in-development drugs for blood cancer got the go-ahead from the FDA, competition would be much too fierce.”

GlobalData notes that ‘me-too’ (follow-on drugs) and ‘late-to-market’ drugs are at most risk of poor performance. Furthermore, the most competition will be seen for drugs intended to treat ALL, which has over 300 drugs in the pipeline—as well as two drugs that have already been approved by the FDA.

Paliouras continues: “Despite the market size for B-NHL being at least five times the size of ALL, B-NHL has a smaller pipeline of cell therapies. This means that, given the rarity of the disease, the ALL pipeline is congested. Unfortunately, most of the pipeline CAR-T cell products in ALL will never reach the market due to strategic decisions, potentially prioritizing other cancers.”

Around 80% of the pipeline is autologous cell therapies, despite allogeneic technology having significant advantages, due to allogeneic cells still being unproven in the clinic at a large scale.

Paliouras adds: “The total market for cell therapies in oncology is projected to exceed $37 billion globally by 2028, according to GlobalData. Despite the cell therapy field having advanced significantly in the past five years, newer technologies are thought to be necessary to allow its full fruition. Key opinion leaders interviewed by GlobalData believe that the next iterations of the technology will become the most successful ones by solving several current challenges of cell therapies.”

* Acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (B-NHL), acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), multiple myeloma, and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia