Sector note: Cell Therapy A Thriving Benelux Environment for Next-Generation Medicine

Today, KBC Securities publishes a Sector Note on the field of Cell Therapies, with a dual aim, to provide an introductory view on the sector and its challenges, but also to provide an overview as to why the Benelux is a thriving environment for the development of companies in life sciences in general and in particular for cellular therapies.

Cell therapy generally introduces healthy, sometimes modified cells into a patient's body to replace diseased or missing cell tissue and uses a variety of cell types with different cell sources to address the patient's needs. This technology represents a breakthrough versus other modalities in immunotherapy toward personalised treatment, enabling strong and sustained efficacy. Today, most cell therapies are focused on oncology, but applications are extending into other indications. A vast number of pharma and biotech companies have entered the space, underlining its major commercial potential in years to come. Following massive influx from private and public investors in recent years, the cell therapy space is now maturing to reach and estimated € ca.35bn revenues by 2028.
We focus on the main cell therapy technology in current clinical practice, CAR-T. We have identified several challenges that still have to be overcome to achieve wide-spread clinical adoption, which are, amongst others, issues due to complex engineering, adverse events and duration of response. Furthermore, the field still struggles with manufacturing and supply chain challenges, and complexities with regards to pricing and reimbursement.
While these challenges are being tackled worldwide, we find the Benelux life science ecosystem to be a unique location for the development of new technologies in life sciences due to a number of reasons; such as access to top-notch research institutes that drive innovation in life sciences at a significant output. Also, we note the strong presence of the biopharmaceutical sector as various major pharma players conduct R&D and manufacturing here. Furthermore, private financing for life sciences is locally present through various venture & growth capital firms.
Thus, the Benelux ecosystem is well represented along the Cell Therapy value chain and holds promising companies to tackle current challenges.