How Crowdfunding Could Change the Cell and Gene Therapy Investor Landscape
Regulation crowdfunding opens doors for non-accredited investors to back breakthrough advanced therapies.
One of the biggest challenges facing the cell and gene therapy (CGT) industry is attracting venture capital funding in an uncertain economic landscape. For advanced therapies, running clinical trials can be expensive, with development times sometimes lasting as long as 10 years. In addition, the rare diseases often targeted by cell and gene therapies typically have low total addressable markets (TAMs) and, as a result, the return on investment (ROI) is not always as high as with traditional therapeutics.
Investors are increasingly seeking more clinically validated therapeutic pipelines that can demonstrate scalability and manufacturing cost-effectiveness. Investor caution has been compounded by recent global economic instability, threats of pharmaceutical tariffs and evolving regulatory requirements that are placing greater emphasis on the importance of manufacturing readiness.
To overcome this, CGT developers are adapting by streamlining their supply chains, creating strategic partnerships with vendors, regulators and contract development and manufacturing organizations and developing operational efficiency.
Another unique solution to the formidable funding issues facing the CGT industry may come in the form of crowdfunding. Often associated with startups hoping to get the funding they need to launch and grow, regulation crowdfunding allows private companies to raise capital from the general public, rather than just from wealthy, accredited investors. For cell and gene therapy developers, regulation crowdfunding enables patients and physicians to raise money towards the development of therapies that can have a lasting impact on their own lives and the lives of their patients. Beyond monetary gains, crowdfunding can help raise patient engagement and demonstrate to traditional investors that there is a market for the therapy.
Dr. Neva West is the CEO and co-founder of the BioTech Funding Portal, an investment crowdfunding platform created specifically for life science companies. Technology Networks caught up with West at the Charles River European Cell & Gene Therapy Summit 2025 to learn more about the investment challenges facing biotech startups and how crowdfunding could harness the power of non-accredited investors to support research into conditions with unmet medical needs.
What are some of the biggest funding barriers facing CGT developers today?
Neva West, PhD (NW):
I’m sure there are specific CGT barriers, but more interesting from my perspective, they also have many of the common barriers for any life sciences company. Traditional investors want high ROIs, big TAMs and quick development timelines. Therapies that are expensive to create or have small patient populations cannot compete if these are the sole metrics used to determine whether or not you will get investment dollars. They need to find investors, especially at early stages, who are more interested in the development of the therapy than a high ROI and who understand the development timelines. Crowdfunding could be a source of these investors.
BF:
NW:
The role I see for crowdfunding in life sciences, including CGT, is to bridge the gap between the good science being supported by foundations, advocacy groups, accelerator programs and academic institutions and the clinical data necessary to get large investors or pharmaceutical companies interested in the therapy. With $5 million a year from non-accredited investors, companies de-risk the therapy by proving there is a market for it and are also able to generate more clinical data with the funding.
We’ve designed our selection process to be patient-centric and needs-driven by leveraging the hard work of patient advocacy groups and accelerator programs. The communities are already putting forth what they think they need; we are just helping them to amplify that. We require anybody who's going to list on our portal to come with a collaborator of some sort, and that makes sure that the therapy is patient-centric, because the patients are involved either in the advocacy side, or physicians or academics have determined what the patients need.
We want the companies listed on our portal to have the best chance of success that they possibly can. Failure is not just that a company goes under, but it's the hopes of the patients and physicians, too. So, we really want, once somebody is selected to be on our portal, to help them do as good a job as they possibly can to meet their fundraising targets.
To do that, we are creating collaborations such as the one we have at Charles River, which are looking at high volumes of scientific applicants, and then determining who would be good for crowdfunding from these applicants based on the patient need and the science behind the therapy.
BF:
NW:
