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Watch out, regular drugs—large molecule therapeutics are ready to dominate the market.
The market for large molecule therapeutics, also known as biologics, is worth $300 billion, and despite worries that funding for the biotech industry is slowing down, these drugs represent a “rapidly growing” market, according to a January report based on a PWC study commissioned by private equity firm THL.
What are large molecule therapeutics? Most drugs patients take are made up of small molecules that are administered orally in a pill or a capsule. Large molecule therapeutics “are the result of decades of innovation,” said Megan Preiner, a managing director in THL’s healthcare vertical. These drugs are typically injected or infused.
Multiple types of drugs are categorized as large molecule therapeutics, including cell and gene therapies (CGT), RNA therapies, and monoclonal antibodies, said Preiner. Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine is considered a large molecule therapeutic since it was made using mRNA technology.
Large molecule therapies made up 46% of FDA approvals in 2022, according to the THL report.
CGT in demand: The FDA approved six CGT products in 2022, which is twice as many as the year before, per the THL report. There are more than 2,000 CGT therapies in clinical trials right now, and the CGT space is expected to grow 60% annually through 2026, according to the report.
Gene therapies modify a patient’s genes to treat or cure a disease.
For example, a gene that causes disease could be replaced with a healthy copy, or a drug could inactivate the disease-causing gene. Or, a drug could introduce a new gene into the patient’s body to help treat the disease. Cell therapies work similarly. Live cells are injected into a patient to treat or cure a disease. The cells can come from the patient or a donor. Both gene and cell therapies have the potential to not only treat a disease but also cure it, so the financial effect on the healthcare industry could be huge.
Show me the money: The past decade has seen “tremendous growth” in the amount of money invested in research and development of large molecule therapeutics, said Preiner. Ten years ago, large molecule therapeutics made up about a quarter of the drug R&D pipeline; these days, that proportion is closer to half, she said.
The financial implications of these types of drugs are vast, considering they “change the way our body is working to actually solve a problem, rather than just [make] you feel better,” Preiner said.
“These large molecule therapies have changed what we can do with medicine,” she added.