Large bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies have spent over $4 bil­lion in 2025 to buy star­tups work­ing on in vi­vo CAR-T ther­a­pies as the first da­ta in hu­mans emerge.

While it's still ear­ly days for in vi­vo cell ther­a­py, the deals show that bio­phar­ma is go­ing in on the idea that these next-gen­er­a­tion ther­a­pies can fight can­cer and au­toim­mune dis­ease like tra­di­tion­al CAR-T ther­a­pies, but they’ll be less ex­pen­sive and time-con­sum­ing.

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb be­came the lat­est ac­quir­er on Fri­day morn­ing, com­mit­ting $1.5 bil­lion to pur­chase Or­bital Ther­a­peu­tics. As­traZeneca, Ab­b­Vie and Gilead have all bought biotechs mak­ing in vi­vo treat­ments this year.

Genethon's lat­est da­ta sug­gest its Duchenne mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy gene ther­a­py helped sta­bi­lize func­tion­al out­comes af­ter two years. How­ev­er, the tri­al en­rolled on­ly five pa­tients, who were then com­pared with those from a par­al­lel nat­ur­al his­to­ry study.

The non-prof­it gene ther­a­py de­vel­op­er, which is part of the French Mus­cu­lar Dy­s­tro­phy As­so­ci­a­tion known as AFM-Téléthon, re­cent­ly start­ed a Phase 3 tri­al in hopes of repli­cat­ing the find­ings in more pa­tients and com­par­ing them to place­bo.

Genethon an­nounced the up­dat­ed Phase 1/2 re­sults on Thurs­day at the an­nu­al Eu­ro­pean So­ci­ety of Gene and Cell Ther­a­py meet­ing in Seville, Spain.

A mi­cro­cap biotech from Philadel­phia re­leased ear­ly, but pos­i­tive find­ings from its CAR-T tri­al for a rare au­toim­mune dis­or­der, sug­gest­ing it could be ad­min­is­tered with­out one of the most ar­du­ous as­pects of cell ther­a­py.

Ca­balet­ta Bio on Thurs­day said its CAR-T ther­a­py called rese­cab­ta­gene au­toleu­cel, or rese-cel and pre­vi­ous­ly known as CA­BA-201, in­duced pre­lim­i­nary re­spons­es de­spite pa­tients not re­ceiv­ing any tox­ic pre­con­di­tion­ing reg­i­mens. Re­searchers test­ed the ther­a­py in pem­phi­gus vul­garis, an au­toim­mune dis­ease af­fect­ing the skin and mu­cus mem­branes.

Pre­con­di­tion­ing has been a sta­ple of CAR-T since its in­cep­tion and is an im­por­tant part of the can­cer-fight­ing process.

Pa­tients who take ap­proved CAR-Ts for blood can­cers must first re­ceive a reg­i­men of ex­treme­ly in­ten­sive chemother­a­py that ef­fec­tive­ly wipes out the body’s en­tire im­mune sys­tem. Then, the pa­tient’s T cells are ge­net­i­cal­ly reengi­neered and put back in­to the body, train­ing the im­mune sys­tem to fight can­cer cells from scratch.