Bryan Roberts from Venrock joins to discuss Eli Lilly's acquisition of Kelonia, a gene therapy company Venrock seeded in 2020, for up to $7 billion.
Bryan walks through the original investment thesis: autologous ex vivo CAR-T therapy was producing remarkable efficacy in late-stage multiple myeloma, but everything else about the model was broken: six to seven week processing times, $220,000 cost of goods, and delivery restricted to academic medical centers. The bet was that Kelonia's in vivo platform, developed out of MIT and CNRS in France, could preserve the efficacy while eliminating the rest.
He describes the path to exit as anything but linear. The 2022 biotech financing freeze hit preclinical cell and gene therapy companies especially hard. Kelonia survived through pharma partnership deals with Astellas and J&J that funded operations without giving up the lead program, and by staying focused on getting to clinical data, which they achieved mid-2025.
The conversation closes with Bryan's honest read on the cell and gene therapy landscape: the $2M+ commercial launches have largely failed, the path forward is pricing in the $300-400K range, and the infrastructure required to deliver these therapies broadly is at least a decade away from where it needs to be.
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