Overcoming the CAR-T cell therapy bottleneck driven by long wait times and arduous manufacturing processes has proven difficult, even for the world’s largest drugmakers. Will a stronger push for off-the-shelf treatments bring a smoother market experience? Big Pharma hopes so.
Eli Lilly’s announcement this week that it will purchase Orna Therapeutics for $2.4 billion is part of a wider M&A trend reflecting drugmakers’ efforts to fuel their pipelines with cell therapies that are easier to make and administer, offering access to a wider patient population and a fuller market.
Pharma has seen blockbuster success with ex vivo treatments known as autologous CAR-T cell therapies, which require an extensive process of removing a patient’s cells, engineering them with modified genes and reintroducing them to the patient. Cancer treatments like Carvykti from Johnson & Johnson and Yescarta from Gilead Sciences’ Kite Pharma each pulled in more than $1 billion in 2025 sales. But growth is limited by slow uptake and manufacturing delays, which have led to scalability constraints.
That’s why pharma giants like Lilly, AbbVie, Gilead, Bristol Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca have within the last year scoured the biotech landscape and purchased smaller drugmakers with off-the-shelf, or allogenic, versions. Although off-the-shelf options have faced some difficulties in the U.S. regulatory arena, the field holds a great deal of promise on top of unmet medical need.
These deals signal a new wave of cell therapy is on the horizon if industry juggernauts can leverage their clinical and regulatory expertise, as well as commercial prowess, to make CAR-T available to more patients.
(Deal value includes upfront cash and potential milestone payments.)
Eli Lilly and Orna Therapeutics
Announcement: February 2026
Deal value: $2.4 billion
Despite a deep bench in oncology, Lilly is new to the CAR-T realm. But with its vast GLP-1 windfall launching the company to the top of the Big Pharma ranks, Lilly is bolstering its pipeline across the board.
The biotech Orna uses “circular RNA” to make genetic material more stable as it’s incorporated into a patient’s autoimmune cells. Targeting a well-known receptor called CD19, the company’s “clinical trial-ready” lead candidate ORN-252 is designed to treat B cell-driven autoimmune diseases, a therapeutic area that includes lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.
Lilly is looking to enter the CAR-T arena with a next-gen focus on in vivo therapies that could overcome the difficulties of autologous therapies, according to Dr. Francisco Ramirez-Valle, Lilly’s senior vice president, head of immunology research and early clinical development.
“Early autologous CAR-T studies have shown the promise of cell therapy for patients with autoimmune diseases, but the complexity, cost and logistics of ex vivo approaches make it challenging to deliver these breakthroughs to the broader population of patients who need them,” Ramirez-Valle said in a statement.
Bristol Myers Squibb and Orbital Therapeutics
Announcement: October 2025
Deal value: $1.5 billion
BMS has two autologous CAR-T cell therapies on the market — Abecma for multiple myeloma and Breyanzi for lymphoma — courtesy of the 2019 megamerger with Celgene. But after the pharma giant pulled back on deals with cell therapy biotechs, a step into in vivo CAR-T marked a new direction.
Similar to Lilly’s Orna deal, the $1.5 billion purchase of Orbital gives BMS a near-clinical lead program that targets B cell autoimmune diseases with the CD19 receptor, and the two pharmas will compete in the market if trials go smoothly.
Gilead Sciences’ Kite and Interius BioTherapeutics
Announcement: August 2025
Deal value: $350 million
Kite, one of the most prominent cell therapy companies prior to its 2017 acquisition by Gilead, is making moves of its own to be part of CAR-T’s next stage. Announcing it would pick up private biotech Interius last year for $350 million, Gilead touted the company’s promising platform in both oncology and immunology, while also pushing into the in vivo arena.
“In vivo therapy is a promising frontier with the potential to transform how we approach treating patients, shifting to more accessible and scalable solutions,” Kite’s executive vice president Cindy Perettie said in a statement.
AbbVie and Capstan Therapeutics
Announcement: June 2025
Deal value: $2.1 billion
AbbVie collected an in vivo CAR-T candidate with the purchase of Capstan Therapeutics last summer. The $2.1 billion deal gives the pharma giant access to an early-stage candidate called CPTX2309, an in vivo CD19 targeted CAR-T cell therapy for autoimmune diseases.
With a lipid nanoparticle delivery platform to shuttle mRNA into the body without needing to remove cells first, AbbVie hopes to make the drug candidate a “first-in-class” medicine for a variety of B cell-mediated conditions.
AstraZeneca and EsoBiotec
Announcement: March 2025
Deal value: $1 billion
AstraZeneca has gotten its hands on a nanobody platform from Belgium’s EsoBiotec that could be used for in vivo cell therapy. The $1 billion deal gives AstraZeneca a multiple myeloma candidate in early-stage clinical trials, as well as a lineup of potential autoimmune and solid tumor programs in preclinical stages.
“We believe it has the potential to transform cell therapy and will enable us to scale these innovative treatments so that many more patients around the world can access them,” Susan Galbraith, executive vice president of oncology haematology R&D at AstraZeneca, said in a statement.
