Sales of some of the new medications are falling short, and gene therapy, which offers a potential solution for uncommon disorders like sickle cell, is losing early investors to higher-reward industries like obesity and cancer.
Some pharmaceutical companies have withdrawn from the market in the past year, such as Pfizer, which just ceased marketing its hemophilia gene treatment, which costs $3.5 million per patient. The gene therapy pioneer Bluebird Bio, which was once valued at around $10 billion, was sold to private equity companies last month for $30 million.
According to a DealForma data analysis for Reuters, companies that provide gene treatments and gene-editing technologies raised less than $1.4 billion in 39 venture rounds in 2024.
