Can Gene and Cell Therapies Reduce Unprecedented Prices?
Sydney Neibert
September 21, 2026
Gene and cell therapies have progressed from experimental science to real, life-saving treatments for rare diseases, genetic disorders, and cancer. The goal of gene therapies is to correct the underlying molecular problem by restoring the production of normal cellular proteins, whose disruption causes the disease. Cell therapies administer living cells to a patient to restore, replace, or provide a desired cellular function that is disrupted due to an underlying condition.¹⁻³
In cell therapy, therapeutic cells are transplanted into a patient after modification in a lab, such as inducing functional changes by cellular activation.¹ These cells are derived either from the patient (autologous cells) or from a donor (allogeneic cells). Gene therapies, on the other hand, introduce, replace, or silence genes, either by adding the correct genes inside the body (in vivo, typically carried via a viral vector and injected intravenously or through local delivery, like the eye) or outside of the body (ex vivo) and transplanted, commonly through infusion, injection, or surgical implantation.²⁻³
Market Trends and Landscape
Gene and cell therapy markets are rapidly expanding. The global gene therapy market was valued at $3.6 billion USD in 2025 and is projected to reach $20.7 billion USD in 2034 at a CAGR of 22%.⁴ The global cell therapy market is growing even more quickly at a CAGR of 33%, and with a 2025 valuation of $8.6 billion USD, it is projected to grow to $122.9 billion USD by 2034.⁵
Beyond this market expansion, price remains one of the largest constraints for these cutting-edge healthcare innovations. Cell therapies can run from tens of thousands of dollars to $1 million USD per patient. Gene therapies are often more expensive, ranging from $1 million to 4 million USD.² This makes cell and gene therapies some of the most expensive medical treatments ever brought to market, with insurers hesitant to immediately cover them without durable cost-effectiveness.⁶ As a result, patients either face unprecedented out-of-pocket expenses or forgo treatment altogether, exacerbating existing healthcare inequities in the US and making pricing one of the largest disadvantages to market adoption, alongside toxicity and other safety risks, reproducibility in manufacturing, and the durability of the therapy itself.⁷
Reducing the Core Cost-Driver: Manufacturing Expenses
Rare-disease economics compounds the obstacle of high costs for gene and cell therapies. The substantial research and development costs of cell and gene therapies must be borne by relatively small patient populations, unlike those of blockbuster drugs used to treat more common conditions. Clinical trials are lengthy and expensive, though certain regulatory pathways, such as Accelerated Approval or Orphan Drug Act designation, can help offset the costs of rare disease trials with faster timelines and regulatory incentives. Even with these assistance programs for clinical trials, companies must still bear much of the high cost of manufacturing.⁸ There are two prevalent strategies for companies to decrease sticker prices: 1) shifting to in vivo therapy over ex vivo therapy and 2) lowering manufacturing costs.
Shifting to in vivo therapies. Ex vivo therapy is inherently personalized, so it cannot be bulk manufactured. Currently, FDA-approved CAR-T therapy is an example of ex vivo therapy, where a patient’s own immune cells are engineered to fight cancer as a cell-based gene therapy.⁹ In vivo therapy, however, can use standardized, bulk-produced material, allowing economics of scale to make the therapy less expensive to produce and administer.¹⁰ Editas Medicine, a startup backed by major venture funds and a current collaborator of Bristol Myers Squibb, has recently announced a transition towards providing exclusively in vivo therapies, citing expanded therapeutic possibilities and a lower cost compared to ex vivo therapies.¹¹
Lowering manufacturing costs. Some companies have sought to reduce expenditures by moving operations to a country where the cost of labor and manufacturing is lower. The cost of outsourcing to India, for example, is typically 35-40% lower than in the United States or Europe.¹² For example, Bharat Biotech in India opened a $75 million USD facility for high-titer viral vectors. In 2025, GSK aimed to reduce the price of its malaria vaccine, and by partnering with Bharat using their international facilities, they project to cut the price by more than half by 2028.¹³ Tariffs recently proposed by the current US government on imported generic drugs threaten to erode this financial benefit. Even so, manufacturing generics abroad remains a popular alternative to the higher costs associated with North American and European production.¹⁴
Lowering viral vector costs. In traditional gene therapies, viral vectors transport the modified gene into cells. These vectors are one of the largest costs in the manufacturing of these treatments, with the least expensive vectors starting at $2,000 and the most expensive vectors reaching $15 million USD per batch, which treats only up to a few dozen patients.¹⁵ Two approaches to lowering costs are gaining traction. For one approach, using salt-active nucleases to more effectively remove contaminants during manufacturing processes could reduce the cost of viral vector production by an estimated 40%.¹⁶ Additionally, replacing viral vectors with lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), which encapsulate nucleic acids with lipids and shield them from degrading in the body before reaching their target, is estimated to reduce costs by 30-60% compared to viral alternatives when produced at commercial volumes.¹⁶ LNP’s were used to deliver mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.¹⁷
No LNP-delivered gene therapy is FDA-approved yet. However, RNA interference (RNAi) drugs, which deliver small interfering RNA to regulate gene products, have used LNP’s for delivery for years with strong commercial results.¹⁸ For example, Alnylam’s Amvuttra, an LNP-delivered RNAi therapeutic, was first approved by the FDA in 2022. Just three years later, Alnylam was announced to be profitable for the first time in its 23-year history.¹⁹
The Future
Lowering costs will cut pressure from both internal manufacturing efficiencies (outsourcing, cheaper vectors, in vivo shifts) and external policy support (regulatory incentives, broader insurance coverage). For investors, the best-positioned companies are those directly reducing their cost of goods rather than betting on price alone to increase profits.
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