Philly’s year in biopharma: a look back at 2024
Iovance Biotherapeutics and Adaptimmune brought first-of-their-kind cell therapy cancer treatments to market. Others had to retrench.
Two Philadelphia biotech companies scored approval in 2024 for first-of-their-kind gene therapy treatments for solid cancer tumors and melanoma.
Those achievements by Iovance Biotherapeutics and Adaptimmune, companies in South Philadelphia’s Navy Yard, provided evidence of the cell and gene therapy sector’s promise for the region.
But local industry heavyweight Spark Therapeutics retrenched under Swiss owner Roche Group. In December, it pulled the plug on a gene therapy for a blood clotting disorder, hemophilia A, that Roche had called the University City firm’s leading prospect soon after it paid $4.8 billion for the company in 2019.
The year also saw weak demand for laboratory space and operated under the specter that Congress would ban the Chinese-owned biotech research and manufacturing firm WuXi AppTec. WuXi has a large presence in the Navy Yard and is a vital service provider for the sector.
Here’s an overview of some other notable developments:
Venture capital and private equity
The number of biopharma deals continued falling in 2024 , but the region saw larger deals still happening in keeping with national trends. The Philadelphia area logged six private equity deals valued at $100 million or more.
Uniquity Bio, a Malvern company focused on immunology and inflammation, revealed that it had up to $300 million in backing to start phase 2 clinical trials for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease treatment.
Third Arc Bio, a Lower Gwynedd start-up founded by Johnson & Johnson vets, announced in July that it had raised $165 million to pursue T cell treatments for solid tumors and inflammatory and immunology disease.
Mineralys Therapeutics, a publicly-traded company in Radnor, collected $120 million from private investors in February to help it develop medicines to target hypertension and chronic kidney disease.
Reunion Neuroscience and Context Therapeutics, both in Philadelphia, also raised at least $100 million from private investors. Reunion, which took in $103 million in May, is working on psychedelic treatments for mental illness. Publicly traded Context raised $100 million for its work on medicines for solid tumors.
Also notable was a $67 million investment in Interius BioTherapeutics in August. The University of Pennsylvania spinout, based at Pennovation Works, is trying to develop a faster and cheaper approach to delivering CAR-T inside the body. Currently, these therapies require reengineering a patient’s cells outside the body and injecting them back into the patient, a process that can take weeks. Interius announced it has, for the first time, dosed a patient with the instructions to build CAR-T inside the body. The first therapy is designed to fight B-cell malignancies.
Stock market moves
It was a slow year for initial public offerings, though companies that were already public were successful with secondary offerings.
Early in the year, when investors were optimistic that the post-COVID capital market doldrums were over, ArriVent BioPharma Inc. debuted on Nasdaq after a $175 million stock sale. The Newtown Square company’s lead clinical program is developing a treatment for non-small cell lung cancer.
Two small companies had initial public offerings in the stock market late in the year. Medicus Pharma in Conshohocken raised $4 million in November, and BriaCell Therapeutics raised $5.5 million in December .
Companies that were already public raised more in secondary offerings.
Madrigal Pharmaceuticals, which has been publicly traded since 2016, generated $660 million in net proceeds from a stock sale in April. The West Conshohocken company won FDA approval in March for the first drug aimed at treating scarring and inflammation caused by abnormal accumulations of fat in the liver.
» READ MORE: UPenn has spun out Jim Wilson's gene therapy program into two companies.
Larimar Therapeutics in Bala Cynwyd received $161.8 million in net proceeds from a February stock sale. Larimar has had publicly-traded shares since 2020. The company’s lead drug candidate is a treatment for Friedrich’s ataxia, a neurodegenerative disorder.
In July, Savara netted $94 million from a secondary offering. The Langhorne company focuses on rare respiratory diseases and has been publicly traded since 2017, when it took over an existing publicly traded company.
Layoffs and closures
Layoffs are an inevitable part of the ebb and flow of biotech, as companies run into dead ends for what seemed like promising treatments. That sort of retrenchment happened multiple times in the Philadelphia region.
Marinus Pharmaceuticals, a Radnor company that focuses on therapies for seizures, said in Novemberthat it was laying off 45% of its workforce after disappointing results from a clinical trial. That was the company’s second cutback. In May, Marinus had laid off 20% of its workforce (35 people) to preserve cash.
A Penn spinout Carisma Therapeutics also had two rounds of cutbacks in 2024. In December the Philadelphia company ended efforts to develop a fast-tracked cancer treatment based on macrophages, the white blood cells that fight disease. The company announced that it would cut 34% of it workforce in connection with that narrowing of its scope. The company had already trimmed 37% of its work force in April. At the end of 2023, Carisma had 107 full-time employees, according to its annual report.
Arbutus BioPharma, a Warminster virology company working on a treatment for chronic hepatitis B, announced the layoff of 40% of its staff after deciding to end work on one its product candidates. The company employed 73 at the end of last year.
» READ MORE: Adaptimmune dosed first patient, and announce layoffs.
Spark Therapeutics laid off an undisclosed number of employees in 2024 after ending some of its early-stage programs, Endpoints News, a trade publication, reported in July.
A former Tmunity Therapeutics office in Philadelphia will close next year under new owner Gilead Sciences, FierceBiotech reported in November. Tmunity’s founders include Penn professors Carl June and Bruce Levine.
Real estate moves
Three big new life sciences research and development buildings in Philadelphia are expected to be finished by June, even as the vacancy rate climbed this year for the third year in a row, according to Colliers, a real estate firm.
All of those buildings were planned before it was clear that the investment slowdown of the last three years was happening. Colliers said it expects the pace of companies leasing that new space to increase over the next three years. The second half of 2024 had a few notable deals.
The Wistar Institute, a independent nonprofit research organization, announced in July that it would spend $24 million to open its 25,000 square-foot HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center in uCity Square at 3675 Market St., a new life sciences building.
The developers of an R&D facility at 2300 Market St. scored a victory in October when Legend Biotech agreed to lease 31,000 square feet for a new cell therapy facility. The Somerset, N.J., company said it expects to employ 55 there when it’s fully operational.
Also in October, Nucleus RadioPharma announced plans to build a 48,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Spring House, Montgomery County. The Minnesota company’s investors include Fox Chase Cancer Center. Nucleus makes radioactive molecules that can target solid tumors with more precision than traditional methods.
Sbarro Health Research Organization, a nonprofit based at Temple University, is expanding into additional space Race Street Labs with a 10-year, 8,000 square-foot lease that started Dec. 1. The plan is to use the space in the former Hahnemann University Hospital complex to help commercialize research done at overseas partners.