The American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASCGT) and Orphan Therapeutics Accelerator (OTXL) have teamed up to launch an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled marketplace for shelved cell and gene therapy (CGT) products.
The pair have designed the new platform, named CGTxchange, to bring together academics, investors, biotechs and non-profit CGT developers in the hope of reinvigorating development programmes for previously discarded assets, many of which were pigeonholed due to funding, rather than safety or efficacy reasons, OTXL’s COO, Beth White, tells Pharmaceutical Technology.
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White compares the platform to online marketplace Zillow, stating it is a two-sided platform that connects sponsors, funders and partners looking to strike a deal around a clinical-stage, rare disease asset. By providing this service, OTXL hopes to facilitate the advancement of previously shelved assets through traditional or alternative development and financing models, including the growing non-profit approach.
“We put together a profile for each asset, with a simple one-to-four scoring system for several categories, including a therapy’s preclinical, clinical efficacy and safety, market opportunity and regulatory path. This provides users with a picture of what these assets look like, so potential partners and investors can go shopping,” White comments.
When selecting assets for inclusion on CGTxchange, White notes that OTXL actively assesses the science behind each therapy, allowing only those that nonprofit deems “promising and de-risked” to make the cut.
White adds that the team designed the platform to be user-friendly for those who don’t have the same bandwidth or resources as traditional venture capital groups – providing information that can help impact investors, venture philanthropists, family offices, and other partners find and license a programme.
The platform debuts shortly after the former principal deputy commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Janet Woodcock, noted that more than 1,000 programmes in the preclinical and clinical stages have been put on ice in recent years due to economic factors.
Drugs get a new lease of life
Despite the promise of CGTs, commercial viability challenges, accessibility issues, and high development and manufacturing costs continue to plague the CGT sector, resulting in some companies pulling their operations.
This includes Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, which shuttered its cell therapy division in October 2025, leaving its Parkinson’s stem cell therapy asset – amongst others – up for grabs to potential buyers. This week, Cellular Intelligence opted to give the drug a new lease of life by buying its global rights and forging on with its development programme.
When Takeda walked away from cell therapy in a priority U-turn that same month, the Japanese pharma announced it would be putting its cell therapy platform technologies up for sale. It is publicly unknown whether the company has found a buyer.
Outside of the CGT space, biotechs are increasingly buying assets from big pharma to progress in-house. For example, HMRC Brain Health is currently developing a nelivaptan, a vasopressin 1b inhibitor it picked up from previous developer, Sanofi, for major depressive disorder (MDD), while Alfasigma is further developing GSK’s experimental liver disease drug after buying the drug’s global rights for $690m in March 2026.
