More than 100 biopharma executives and experts told Scrip their predictions for therapeutic area advances in the coming year. The recent commercial success of GLP-1s in diabetes and obesity and their potential in further disease areas fuelled excitement around the metabolic space. Expectations were also positive in neurology following the launch of Leqembi for Alzheimer’s disease in 2023, while the multiple opportunities to improve cancer treatment kept oncology top of the pile overall.

Experts see allogeneic CAR-Ts as less likely to carry potential risks of T-cell malignancies, and an opportunity for differentiation against the crowded autologous CD19-directed CAR-T space.

CAR-T therapy-associated T-cell malignancies that the US FDA is investigating could make the treatments less attractive in autoimmune diseases than in oncology, but patients in both settings already accept some cancer risk with other available medicines.

Hopes are that the impact of the US FDA’s investigation into a small number of T-cell malignancies associated with CAR-T therapies will be small since the benefit/risk profile still looks sound.