Posted on: 8 May 2018, source: GEN
Gene therapy’s numbers look promising. In a year full of biopharma mergers and acquisitions, one of the biggest deals has been Novartis’ planned $8.7 billion purchase of AveXis, whose lead candidate AVXS-101 has advanced into a pivotal trial following positive Phase I data published in November in The New England Journal of Medicine. Additional figures furnished to GEN by Informa show the extent of gene-therapy development: Informa Pharma Intelligence’s Trialtrove database records 729 gene therapies as having been developed, of which nearly two-thirds (461) were preclinical. Those therapies have been assessed in 1,855 clinical trials, most in early phases: 657 in Phase I, 509 in Phase I/II, and 455 in Phase II. As for later development, 89 have reached Phase III, 32 are in Phase II/III, and 28 in Phase IV.