Cell Therapy Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 8.5% concentration at the top. The five leading assignees hold only 8,858 of 104,139 records in scope — a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants sits beneath them.
- Filings cooled after a 2021 peak. Annual filings ran from 2,008 in 2021 to 1,216 in 2024, a 39% pullback over that span, though 2025-26 counts are still filling in as publications catch up to filings.
- A61K and C07K dominate the claim map. Medicinal preparations and peptide/protein claims each cover more than 11% of all records, while enzymatic synthesis and heterocyclic classes sit under 1%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (2,008 records) with 2024 (1,216) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 104,139 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the cell therapy patent record actually shows
Cell therapy patenting spans everything from CAR-T constructs and dual variable domain immunoglobulins to the assay and biomarker work that determines whether a given therapy will respond in a given patient. The search scope behind this page pairs therapy-type terms with the functional language of dosage composition, binding assay, therapeutic response and related claim elements, which pulls in both the therapeutic constructs themselves and the diagnostic and delivery infrastructure built around them.
Filing activity in this scope goes back well before 2017 in adjacent art, but the tracked window here runs from 2017 through the 2026 cut-off, giving a fifteen-year filing arc anchored on a clear 2021 peak. Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the final one to two years of any trend chart will always look thinner than the underlying filing activity actually was.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 104,139-record scope: the year-by-year filing count, and the IPC subclasses those filings claim into. Read the most recent one to two years as incomplete rather than as a genuine slowdown.
Filings rose to a 2021 peak, then eased
Annual filings climbed from 1,043 in 2017 to a peak of 2,008 in 2021, then fell to 1,216 by 2024 — a 39% decline over that three-year span. Counts for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete due to publication lag and should not be read as a continuation of that decline.
Medicinal preparations and peptide claims lead the composition
A61K (medicinal preparations) covers 14.5% of the 104,139 records and C07K (peptides and proteins) covers 11.0%. A61P and C12N each sit near 8.6%, while G01N, C12Q, C12P and C07D taper off toward under 1% — the assay, fermentation and heterocyclic-compound branches are comparatively thin relative to the therapeutic-composition core.
Shares are the percentage of the 104,139 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Cell Therapy Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about cell therapy patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative claim: patient-response prediction, not the cell product itself
Serum metabolomics related to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy
Disclosed herein are methods and compositions for determining and improving the likelihood of response and decreasing the likelihood of toxicity to a cellular therapy using metabolomics. The disclosure covers measuring specific metabolites in biological samples to determine whether an individual is a responder or non-responder, or is at risk of toxicity, to a cellular therapy, together with compositions for increasing response or decreasing toxicity. Plasma metabolomics are shown to correlate with efficacy and toxicity outcomes.Filed by the Board of Regents, The University of Texas System — published 2024-07-18.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO2007024715A2 | Dual variable domain immunoglobin and uses thereof | 1,550 |
| 2 | US20070010702A1 | Medical device with low magnetic susceptibility | 1,511 |
| 3 | US7612181B2 | Dual variable domain immunoglobulin and uses thereof | 1,351 |
| 4 | US20070071675A1 | Dual variable domain immunoglobulin and uses thereof | 991 |
| 5 | WO2013132044A1 | Combination therapy of antibodies against human CSF-1r and uses thereof | 846 |
| 6 | WO2004065540A2 | Fusion constructs and use of same to produce antibodies with increased fc receptor binding affinity and effec… | 833 |
| 7 | US20050136049A1 | Binding constructs and methods for use thereof | 804 |
| 8 | US20140271635A1 | Treatment of cancer using humanized Anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor | 739 |
| 9 | US20050107870A1 | Medical device with multiple coating layers | 578 |
| 10 | WO2016014789A2 | BCMA chimeric antigen receptors | 533 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations within this corpus; treat them as a signal of influence, not of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once the ranking, the trend and the IPC composition are read together.
The core is contested, the tail is wide
The five leading assignees combine for 8,858 of 104,139 records in scope — 8.5% of the field — and the top ten add up to only 15.2%. That leaves the large majority of filings distributed across a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants, which is typical of a field still absorbing new entrants around a therapeutic modality rather than one dominated by a handful of platform holders.
A 2021 peak, then a real pullback
Filing volume rose steadily from 1,043 in 2017 to 2,008 in 2021, then declined to 1,216 by 2024, a drop of 39% across three complete filing years. Several of the most active individual assignees show even sharper year-on-year pullbacks in the latest tracked year, though those single-year figures should be read alongside the broader publication lag rather than as a final verdict on activity.
Composition claims are the densest ground
A61K medicinal-preparation claims and C07K peptide/protein claims each sit above 11% of the 104,139-record scope, well ahead of the assay-and-testing classes G01N and C12Q, which sit near or below 3%. That gap suggests composition and formulation claims are heavily occupied territory, while the diagnostic and screening layer around response prediction remains comparatively open.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to cell therapy patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignee landscape: platform biotechs, universities and a scattered tail
The ranked leaders mix specialist cell-therapy biotechs, oncology-focused academic centres and large pharmaceutical companies that have absorbed cell-therapy platforms through acquisition or internal programmes. Co-assignee pairings show that university-industry licensing arrangements, not just wholly-owned filing, account for some of the densest activity at the top of the ranking.
A specialist biotech tops the ranking
The leading assignee's count sits well above the fifth-place figure of 1,577 and the tenth-place figure of 1,343, showing a real gap at the very top of the ranking rather than a tight cluster.
University-pharma co-filing is a real channel
The strongest co-assignee pair in this scope links a major research university with a large pharmaceutical partner, and a second strong pairing links a hospital system with a research institute. These co-filing relationships are a practical signal of which licensing structures are already established in the field.
Filing is US-anchored with a strong PCT layer
The United States receives the largest single share of filings, with the WIPO PCT route and the European Patent Office each carrying several thousand filings behind it. Australia, Canada and Singapore show meaningfully smaller but still active counts, indicating a filing strategy built around US priority with selective international extension.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Juno Therapeutics, Inc. | 5 | -83% |
| The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania | 3 | -86% |
| Board of Regents, The University of Texas System | 1 | -91% |
| Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Inc. | 1 | -90% |
| Amgen Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Novartis AG (Switzerland) | 0 | -100% |
| Genentech, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| The Government of the United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Health and Human Services | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this from here
The figures above describe the shape of the field. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going claim by claim.
Check a specific claim against this landscape
The composition and formulation classes are the densest part of this scope, so a new filing there needs a close read against the existing claim set before drafting.
Run a claim check in Eureka →Track the assignees moving fastest
Year-on-year momentum varies sharply across the ranked leaders; a small number of assignees account for most of the recent-year activity in either direction.
Monitor assignee activity in Eureka →Explore the under-claimed branches
Assay and screening classes sit far below the therapeutic-composition classes in filing density, which is where first-claim opportunities are more likely to remain open.
Explore white space in Eureka →Cell therapy patents: common questions
No single company dominates this field outright. The leading assignee in this scope holds 1,890 records, and the five leading assignees together account for 8,858 of the 104,139 records in scope, or 8.5% of the total. The remainder is spread across a long tail of universities, biotechs and pharmaceutical companies with far fewer filings each, so freedom-to-operate work generally has to look beyond the top few names.
Filing volume peaked in 2021 at 2,008 records and had fallen to 1,216 by 2024, a 39% decline over that three-year span, which is a genuine pullback rather than an artefact. However, figures for 2025 and 2026 are not yet complete because publication typically lags the original filing date by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years will always understate real activity until later data catches up.
The densest classes in this scope are A61K (medicinal preparations), covering 14.5% of all 104,139 records, and C07K (peptides and proteins), covering 11.0%. A61P (therapeutic activity of compounds) and C12N (microorganisms and genetic engineering) each sit near 8.6%. Assay-related classes such as G01N and C12Q are comparatively thin, each under 3% of records, which points to less-crowded claim space around diagnostics and screening methods.
Relative to the dense composition and formulation classes, the assay, screening and enzymatic-synthesis branches show much lower filing density in this dataset, with classes like C12P and C07D each under 1% of the 104,139 records. That gap points toward more room for new claims in biomarker-guided dosing, toxicity-prediction assays and standardised responder-phenotyping screens than in the core therapeutic-composition space, where filing density is already high.
US20240241107A1, filed by the Board of Regents of The University of Texas System and published 2024-07-18, claims methods and compositions for predicting and improving response to cellular therapy using serum metabolomics, including identifying responder versus non-responder phenotypes and reducing toxicity risk. It illustrates a broader shift in recent filings toward the diagnostic and patient-selection layer around cell therapy, rather than the therapeutic cell construct itself. That distinction matters for anyone assessing whether a new filing collides with existing composition claims or with this more recently active diagnostic layer.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.