2025 Investment Signal Heatmap: A Snapshot of Cell and Gene Therapy
The cell and gene therapy field continues to evolve. Alongside breakthrough science, 2025 has brought both new capital inflows and painful workforce reductions. To make sense of the mixed signals, Lonrú Consulting has built an Investment Signal Heatmap.
This interactive tool captures a fixed snapshot of publicly reported financings, acquisitions, layoffs and shutdowns across 2025. Each cell in the matrix shows a net signal score, balancing investment against contraction, and lets you click through to see the events behind the number.
What the matrix shows
The matrix consolidates the data into four modality families, to capture the essential scientific groupings that investors, developers and enabling companies all track:
Cell therapies (covering CAR-T, TCR and NK approaches)
Gene therapies - viral (AAV, lentiviral and related vectors)
Gene editing (CRISPR, base, prime and epigenetic editing)
RNA and non-viral (mRNA/LNP and emerging non-viral delivery systems)
Against this we set three categories that reflect the types of technologies and infrastructure that support every program:
Delivery and engineering (electroporation systems, LNPs, viral vector engineering, upstream instrumentation)
Analytics and assays (QC, potency, off-target measurement, research tools)
Manufacturing and regulatory (CDMOs, software, clinical and regulatory operations)
This structure keeps the matrix compact and offers clarity. It also reflects how capital actually flows: money moves into therapeutic modalities on one axis and into the enabling tool and service layer on the other.
We then defined strict criteria for what counts as a signal. Only investment and workforce events were included; financings, acquisitions, asset sales, partnerships with disclosed financials, and layoffs, divestments or shutdowns. We deliberately excluded softer announcements like product launches or new assays unless they were tied to funding or jobs. That way every cell is lit by hard evidence of capital flowing in or out.
Scores are calculated on a log scale so that magnitude matters. A billion-dollar acquisition should outweigh a small seed round, and a thousand-person layoff should weigh more heavily than a dozen redundancies. Stage weights give more influence to later-stage financings, and severity weights reflect the difference between minor and major reductions. The outcome is a single net score per cell that balances positive and negative events, providing a quick visual read on where the field is expanding and where it is under pressure.Main trends
Gene therapies - viral are the bright spot. The field shows the strongest positive signal in 2025, driven by large raises at Kriya and Atsena and major CDMO financings from WuXi AppTec and Oxford Biomedica. These outweighed Bluebird’s cash crunch and layoffs at Catalent.
Gene editing is mixed. Big pharma’s $1.3 billion acquisition of Verve and a $175 million raise by Tune Therapeutics were significant positives. But shutdowns at Spotlight, layoffs at Prime Medicine, and retrenchments in enabling companies like MaxCyte and Eikon left the overall balance just above neutral.
Cell therapies are under pressure. Arsenal, Allogene and Nkarta all made substantial staff cuts. Adaptimmune’s $55 million asset sale offered a counterweight but did not offset the contraction.
RNA and non-viral is flat to negative. Vertex’s $65 million partnership with Orna added a positive note, but Moderna’s 10 percent workforce cut, and layoffs at suppliers TriLink and Aldevron, weigh the score into negative territory.
Why this matters
For investors, partners and operators, the Heatmap makes it clear where momentum is building and where caution is needed. It also surfaces enabling technologies that may not make headlines but are critical to the health of the ecosystem.
Explore the Heatmap
The Investment Signal Heatmap is available to explore below. Click into any cell to see the events and analysis behind each score.
This is a snapshot, not a forecast. But it provides a clear window into how capital is shaping the cell and gene therapy field right now, and where the opportunities and risks are emerging.
