April was a crazy month for In-Vivo CAR-T – and The Biotech Voyager captured much of it.
There’s been acquisition after acquisition. Billions of dollars thrown around.
Well, as expected, we are now seeing a massive uptick in the number of “in vivo CAR-T” companies coming out of the woodwork.
Six different early-stage in vivo CAR-T signals crossed our desk in April alone.
Worth pausing to look at them together.
The latest is Vivacta Bio, the Shanghai-based spinoff of Grit Biotherapeutics, which closed over $50 million in combined Series A and A+ financing with a stacked syndicate including Loyal Valley Capital, Decheng Capital, OrbiMed, Hankang Capital, Eisai Innovation, and Qiming Venture Partners.
Their lead asset, GT801, uses T-cell-targeted lipid nanoparticles to deliver mRNA encoding an anti-CD19 CAR. Phase 1 first-in-human data was presented at ASH 2025. Indications span hematologic malignancies and autoimmune disease.
In vivo CAR-T coverage in The Voyager, April 2026
April 13
Allogene’s ALPHA3 readout validates off-the-shelf CAR-T, and we flag in vivo as the rising challenger that could leapfrog allogeneic.
April 20
Immunofoco presents preclinical data on IMV102, an in vivo BCMA CAR-T built on its iMAGIC lentiviral platform. Already has a Phase 3 ex vivo CAR-T, now hedging into in vivo.
April 23
CREATE Medicines doses first patient with MT-304, a first-in-class multi-immune in vivo CAR for HER2 solid tumors. The category enters the clinic in solid tumors.
April 27
Sail Biomedicines reports NHP data showing in vivo CAR-T B cell depletion across blood, bone marrow, and lymph nodes via eRNA-TNP delivery.
April 29
Vivacta Bio closes $50M+ Series A/A+ for GT801, a T-LNP-delivered CD19 CAR with ASH 2025 first-in-human data already on the board.
April 29
ME Therapeutics updates on a preclinical dual CD19/CD22 in vivo CAR program plus a CAR-M (myeloid CAR) approach. Vancouver-listed, very early but reaching.
Six companies, four delivery technologies, three different antigens, two continents. Different bets on the bottleneck.
Vivacta and CREATE are betting on T-cell-targeted LNPs.
Sail Biomedicines is betting on engineered RNA in tunable nanoparticles.
Immunofoco is betting on lentiviral delivery.
ME Therapeutics is reaching for dual CARs and myeloid CAR.
Underneath, they all share the same pitch: skip ex vivo manufacturing, generate the engineered cells inside the patient, scale infinitely, and disrupt a $20 billion ex vivo CAR-T market in the process.
I have my doubts regarding the oncology programs…but autoimmunity…that’s where I think this makes the most sense.
Lupus, MS, vasculitis, dermatomyositis.
Conditions where you don’t need SUPER robust T cell activity or persistence, and where you don’t have to deal with a combative, immunosuppressive bolus of rapidly dividing immuno-evasive cells.
If a single IV infusion of LNP-encoded CAR mRNA can produce comparable B cell depletion, the addressable population is hundreds of thousands instead of hundreds.
The translational uncertainty real, though.
None of these companies have shown durable, sustained CAR expression that matches an ex vivo product.
mRNA is transient by design. The companies that figure out how to engineer durable in vivo expression, or argue convincingly that you don’t need durability for autoimmune resets, will own the next chapter.
The ones that can’t will probably just become acquihires for whoever does.
The early-stage cohort racing toward that bar got noticeably more crowded this month. Watch the cap tables.
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