After a major spike during the COVID-19 pandemic years, cell and gene therapy investment has since slowed down considerably. The figures now look pale in comparison to the $19.9 billion made in 2020 and the $22.7 billion made in 2021, with levels falling to $12.6 billion in 2022 and $11.7 billion in 2023. This has led to many gene therapy companies in particular needing to cut programs or lay off workers to save money. In this article, we explore what is behind the investment slowdown and detail the unfortunate consequences of this.Table of contentsWhat’s behind the dip in investment in the gene therapy sector?As promising as gene therapies are, one of the main issues for investors is that these types of treatments come with a lot of risk and, even if they are successful, it takes a long time for them to produce monetary rewards, as they require much longer than other types of therapies to advance through the clinic before eventually reaching the market.“We’re largely seeing investments shifting to things that are de-risked,” said Jon Norris, managing director at HSBC Innovation Banking, in a statement to Biopharma Dive. “Cell and gene therapy is becoming an area we know better, because there are products that have advanced through development, but it still doesn’t compare to the number of approvals and drugs commercially available in small molecules or biologics.”Manufacturing bottlenecks are also a major factor putting off investors. Manufacturing gene therapies generally involves a long process that can take weeks to complete, as a patient’s cells are collected, multiplied, and modified in a laboratory

WATERTOWN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dyno Therapeutics, Inc., a techbio company pioneering applications of artificial intelligence to engineer AAV capsids that expand the potential of genetic medicine, today hosted a Scientific Symposium at the 27th American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) Annual Meeting being held in Baltimore, MD.The Scientific Symposium showcased Dyno’s approach to applying artificial intelligence to engineering novel adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids for optimized in vivo delivery. The Symposium, titled “AAV Capsid Design in the Era of AI,” covered Dyno’s approach to solving one of the most difficult challenges of gene therapy: safely and efficiently delivering therapeutic DNA to target organs within a patient’s body.“The present AI revolution in biotech was prefaced by decades of exponential change in the tech industry which catalyzed the personal computer revolution by putting a computer on every desk in every home, then into every pocket and on every wrist. Now the convergence of exponential change in AI, genome sequencing, and DNA synthesis technologies is driving a similar trend, this time with respect to the cost of in vivo gene delivery,” said Eric Kelsic, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Dyno Therapeutics.“Today gene therapies can cost several millions of dollars per dose,” Kelsic continued. “Dyno is committed to reducing the cost of delivering therapeutic DNA down to zero, which will be key to making the next generation of transformative gene therapies even more affordable. Historical trends suggest that dramatic cost reductions will actually grow the overall gene therapy market, supporting a robust ecosystem of gene therapy developers and eventually enabling billions of patients to benefit from life-changing gene therapies."Using generative AI, Dyno recently increased the efficiency of capsid-mediated in vivo DNA delivery in the eye by 80-fold with the Dyno eCap™ 1 capsid, and to the brain by 100-fold with the Dyno bCap™ 1 capsid. Building on these initial successes, Kelsic shared how Dyno’s AI-powered methods achieved two breakthroughs, in Low-Shot Efficient Accelerated Performance (LEAP), and in the design of synthetic capsid serotypes:Capsids designed with LEAP dramatically outperformed capsids designed by humans without AI-assistance, improving in vivo delivery efficiency and potentially enabling lower manufacturing costs: Dyno developed LEAP technology to efficiently generate capsid sequences with enhanced performance beyond any of the capsids in the training data

WATERTOWN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dyno Therapeutics today announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to leverage Dyno’s field-leading artificial intelligence (AI) and in vivo experimentation capabilities, along with the built-to-scale NVIDIA BioNeMo AI-powered drug design platform, to help advance biological sequence design. Everything life does is controlled by biological sequences: DNA, RNA, and proteins. The capacity to design these sequences can drastically improve outcomes in healthcare and technology. Over the past decade, Dyno has pioneered an AI-powered approach to sequence design, creating some of the first in vivo-validated biologics using generative AI. Recently, Dyno’s proprietary generative AI methods yielded optimized capsid products that allow enhanced in vivo delivery of genetic therapies for Dyno’s partners, including the Dyno eCap™ 1 capsid in the eye and the Dyno bCap™ 1 capsid in the brain. Both have been validated through in vivo studies