Through the Lonrú Lens to What to Watch at ASGCT 2025

The American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy’s annual meeting is always a bell-wether for where the field is heading, and this year’s New Orleans programme is the biggest yet. Our data-driven sweep of the abstracts surface five story-lines worth tracking to plus a free interactive dashboard to help you cut through the noise once you arrive in NOLA.

1. 2,196 reasons to plan your diary

• 2,196 presentations spread over five days to workshops, orals, symposia, posters and fireside chats.

• 1,925 individual speakers from 1,094 organisations.

• Poster-heavy: ~67 % of all slots.

Take-away → the sheer scale demands a smart filtering strategy.

2. AAV still wears the crown to but the court is changing

Below is a quick-glance infographic of the five strongest themes surging through the agenda:

• General gene therapy & AAV delivery remains the heavyweight, anchoring ≈ 640 talks that probe tropism, PK/PD and clinical translation.

• CAR-T and other engineered T-cells follow with just over 320 sessions, reflecting the field’s pivot toward solid-tumour applications and off-the-shelf platforms.

• AAV production & manufacturing clocks in at ≈ 250 presentations, proof that CMC and scale-up have moved from backstage to centre stage.

• LNP to mRNA delivery, once a niche, now commands nearly 90 slots, signalling non-viral vectors’ mainstream arrival.

• And AAV capsid engineering for CNS rounds out the leaderboard with ≈ 80 talks, underscoring the race to breach the blood-brain barrier.

3. Gene editing graduates from “emerging” to essential

Editing-related abstracts almost double year-on-year (122 talks). While Cas9 platform work still leads, prime/base editing, compact nucleases and first-in-human in-vivo data are pushing the field from tool-building towards translation.

4. Who’s punching above their weight?

Academia still owns the podium to UMass Chan, Duke, Minnesota, Fred Hutch to yet tool suppliers such as Thermo Fisher and Millipore Sigma climb the rankings with manufacturing and analytics content. Corporate voices are broad but not yet dominant: the top-20 companies represent <15 % of the agenda.

5. What narratives will shape corridor talk?

Below is a visual snapshot of the four “big-picture” narratives we believe will dominate the hallway chatter in New Orleans. Use it as a quick mental map, then scroll on for the deeper dive in our interactive tool.

• Manufacturing Moves Mainstream to nearly 250 abstracts tackle capacity, process intensification and analytics, reflecting the sector’s new clinical bottleneck.

• Delivery Diversification to with ~90 LNP-mRNA talks and 80+ capsid-CNS sessions, non-viral and next-gen viral vectors are hedging against single-platform limits.

• Precision Editing Surges to the fastest-growing cluster at 120+ presentations, spanning prime/base editors, compact nucleases and first-in-human data.

• Oncology Evolves to more than 320 engineered-cell abstracts showcase armoured/allo CAR-Ts, NK and macrophage approaches pushing beyond haematologic malignancies.

Together, they frame the strategic questions investors and BD teams will be asking long after the plenaries end.

Meet us on-site & try our free scheduling tool

Our founder, Dr Caoimhe Nic An tSaoir, will be on the ground all week to connect with her to discuss how Lonrú’s data-first approach can illuminate your business decisions.

To make those decisions easier, we’re sharing a complimentary interactive dashboard:

• Search the entire programme by topic cluster, speaker or organisation.

• Visualise busy time-blocks to avoid clashes.

• Zero in on your niche to whether it’s capsid engineering, LNP formulation or clinical trial design.

It’s the fastest way to find your “must-see” talks amid 2k+ abstracts to and it’s yours, free, courtesy of Lonrú.

👉 Try the dashboard below and bookmark it before you pack your bags.

Why talk to Lonrú?

If you’re an enabling-technology or tools company, our VantagePoint™ suite turns noise into strategic clarity: market intelligence, validation road-maps, go-to-market acceleration and investor engagement to all backed by AI/ML analytics. Let’s discuss how we can help you stand out long after the convention centre lights dim.