--- title: "In Vivo CAR-T Enters the Financing Validation Phase" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/284502153.md" description: "In vivo CAR-T technology has rekindled capital interest over the past year, with several major transactions highlighting its commercial potential. Companies such as AbbVie, AstraZeneca, and Eli Lilly have successively acquired related enterprises, demonstrating that in vivo CAR-T is becoming central to the next generation of therapeutic platforms. Weitao Biologics recently completed financing exceeding $50 million, marking the entry of in vivo CAR-T into the institutional pricing stage. This technology aims to address the industrialization and payment challenges facing traditional CAR-T. If clinical validation is successful, it could transform the production and payment logic of cell therapy" datetime: "2026-04-29T06:02:26.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/284502153.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/284502153.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/284502153.md) --- # In Vivo CAR-T Enters the Financing Validation Phase Over the past year or so, In Vivo CAR-T has re-entered the radar of capital markets, with several transactions reviving the commercial imagination surrounding this approach. AbbVie announced in 2025 the acquisition of Capstan for up to $2.1 billion. AstraZeneca acquired EsoBiotec. Eli Lilly announced in April 2026 the acquisition of Kelonia for up to $7 billion. The successive moves by several multinational corporations (MNCs) indicate that in vivo CAR-T has become a core next-generation therapeutic platform they are eager to capture. Eli Lilly’s $7 billion deal has already validated the potential of this therapy. The core reason capital is focusing on in vivo CAR-T remains the industrialization issues that traditional CAR-T has not fully resolved. Traditional CAR-T has already demonstrated the upper limit of efficacy in cell therapy. Companies such as Fosun Kite, WuXi Juno, Legend Biotech, Gracell Biotechnologies, Hycura Biotechnology, and Carsgen Therapeutics have pushed Chinese CAR-T from concept to approval, production, hospital adoption, and payment negotiations. However, the industry is increasingly clear that the real difficulty lies not just in obtaining approval. The challenge is whether patients can afford to wait. The challenge is whether hospitals can handle it at scale. The challenge is how million-yuan price tags can be absorbed by the payment system. The challenge is how the "one drug per patient" production logic can become a sustainable business. In vivo CAR-T attracts capital precisely because it attempts to rewrite these equations: it reduces ex vivo steps such as cell collection, modification, expansion, quality control, and infusion, by delivering genetic instructions into the patient’s body, allowing the patient’s own T cells to generate CAR-T in vivo. If this path is validated by clinical data, both the production organization and payment logic of cell therapy could change. Against this backdrop, on April 29, Weitao Biologics announced that it had recently completed consecutive Series A and Series A+ financing rounds, with a total financing scale exceeding $50 million. According to the company’s disclosed shareholder information, star venture capital firms have gathered, clearly indicating capital’s strategic positioning in in vivo CAR-T. Zhengxingu Capital and Decheng Capital led the investment, while OrbiMed, Hankang Capital, Eisai Innovation Venture Fund, C&D Emerging Investment, and existing shareholders Qiming Venture Partners, Shunxi Fund, and Xingze Capital participated in the follow-on investment. For an early-stage company spun out from Shali Bio and focused on in vivo CAR-T, this combination means that in vivo CAR-T has entered a more defined stage of institutional pricing. ## **Why Was Weitao Spun Out?** Weitao originates from Shali Bio’s in vivo CAR-T platform. Public information shows that Weitao was established on June 25, 2025, developing an in vivo CAR-T pipeline based on a targeted LNP delivery system, targeting hematologic malignancies and autoimmune diseases. Its core project, GT801, is a CD19 in vivo CAR-T candidate product using the T-LNP and mRNA pathway. The new financing will mainly be used to advance clinical trials and regulatory filings for GT801, as well as to expand the R&D team and build platform capabilities. This statement is simple, but behind it lies a corporate structure issue. Shali Bio itself has TIL therapies, solid tumor programs, and pipelines like GT101 and GT201 that are closer to registration and global development. Weitao represents a different risk curve: earlier stage, more platform-oriented, and closer to the imaginative space of next-generation cell therapy. Spinning it out has the most direct benefit of clarifying capital risk preferences. In a dialogue with Wallstreetcn this month, Dr. Chen Kan, Partner at Qiming Venture Partners and Co-Head of the Healthcare Innovation Sector, discussed Shali Bio’s spin-off of Weitao, stating that different investors have different risk tolerances, and the spin-off allows for better matching with "investment institutions with different risk preferences." This is a typical platform spin-off logic. TIL is a product line approaching the deep waters of solid tumor clinical development. In vivo CAR-T is a platform line aiming to rebuild manufacturing and administration paradigms. Within the same company, they would compete for valuation narratives, capital budgets, and management attention. After the spin-off, Weitao can raise funds at its own pace, answer the market with its own data, and attract global partners with its platform data. This move should not be viewed merely as asset shuffling. More accurately, it is about managing assets with different maturity levels and risk-return profiles within different capital structures. ## **Clinical Pain Points Are the Starting Point** Why has in vivo CAR-T been reignited? The answer lies not in the technology itself, but in the clinical setting. Dr. Chen Kan told Wallstreetcn that investment institutions focus on in vivo CAR-T and universal cell therapies primarily to "truly solve the accessibility issue of therapies." He also mentioned that in vivo CAR-T and universal technologies have significant potential to reduce costs and achieve scaled production. This judgment aligns perfectly with the industrial reality of traditional CAR-T over the past few years. China has already approved multiple CAR-T products, and Carsgen Therapeutics’ Claudin18.2 CAR-T has pushed solid tumor CAR-T to the marketing application stage. Traditional CAR-T companies have done substantial groundwork for the industry: Fosun Kite and WuXi Juno completed the earliest commercialization education, Legend Biotech proved with Carvykti that Chinese CAR-T can go global, and Carsgen has advanced the difficult task of solid tumors to the doorstep of regulation. However, they all face a hard constraint: personalized manufacturing is naturally expensive, the cycle is naturally long, and quality control is naturally complex. For patients with hematologic malignancies, waiting itself is a risk. For patients with autoimmune diseases, if the therapy is to reach a larger population in the future, million-yuan personalized treatments will be even harder to become a routine choice. For hospitals, every expansion of complex cell therapy means reorganizing teams, facilities, processes, quality control, and payment mechanisms. This is where the appeal of in vivo CAR-T lies. It does not promise to immediately replace traditional CAR-T, but it does offer a technical route to reduce process complexity. This is also the basis for the continuous recent overseas transactions: large pharmaceutical companies are concerned not only with single pipelines but also with whether CAR-T can evolve further from a hospital-based engineering process toward a drug-like product. ## **Early Data and Unresolved Issues** The key technical terms for Weitao are targeted LNP delivery and mRNA. According to public materials, GT801 utilizes T-cell-targeting lipid nanoparticles to deliver mRNA encoding anti-CD19 CAR. Abstract 148 at the 2026 AACR Annual Meeting disclosed preclinical and preliminary clinical results for GT801: optimized mRNA design enabled the T-LNP platform to achieve CAR expression for over 14 days in human PBMCs; in mouse models reconstituted with human PBMCs, a dose of 0.1 mpk achieved receptor-saturated delivery in multiple lymphoid tissues, with off-target uptake below 1%; a single intravenous dose as low as 0.01 mpk achieved over 95% B-cell depletion. The abstract also mentioned that in PBMCs derived from healthy donors and patients with autoimmune diseases, GT801 achieved over 90% B-cell killing within 24 hours at doses as low as 0.1 μg. These data are still very early and should not be overly amplified. However, they have touched upon the industry’s most pressing concerns: Can sufficient CAR-T be generated safely without lymphodepletion? Can repeated dosing result in controllable CAR expression? Can targeted delivery reduce uptake by non-target cells? Can in vivo generation make the therapy truly accessible? In a dialogue with Wallstreetcn this month, Dr. Liu Yarong, Founder and CEO of Shali Bio and Founder and CEO of Weitao Biologics, was also restrained. She stated that In Vivo CAR is a completely new treatment modality, and currently, "there are no mature references to rely on, so we must explore independently." She also cautioned that no In Vivo CAR products globally have entered registrational clinical trials, and a timeline of 5 to 6 years may be more realistic. This is the reality that in vivo CAR-T companies must currently face. Early clinical signals can increase market attention but are not yet sufficient to constitute definitive conclusions. The next critical step is to use larger sample sizes, longer follow-ups, and a more standardized CMC system to answer questions regarding regulation, dosage, frequency, long-term safety, and indication selection. Dr. Liu Yarong also mentioned that persisting with off-the-shelf and In Vivo CAR-T three or four years ago was because "accessibility is always an issue." This statement also explains the industrial background behind Weitao’s choice of the in vivo CAR-T route. From an industry perspective, this is also the most important commercial hypothesis for in vivo CAR-T: Can cell therapy be waited for, used, and afforded by more patients? The current hype around in vivo CAR-T is similar to when CAR-T was rediscovered by global capital ten years ago. However, today’s industry is more mature and more discerning. Concepts alone are no longer enough; capital looks for clinical signals, MNCs look for platform extensibility, doctors look for real benefits, and patients look at whether they can wait long enough. Perhaps this is the significance of Weitao’s financing round. It provides a clearer footnote for Chinese in vivo CAR-T: this route is moving from platform conception into a parallel phase of financing validation, clinical validation, and industrialization validation. This will not be a short-cycle sector. Human data, regulatory feedback, production stability, and payment models emerging in the coming years will truly determine the industry direction of in vivo CAR-T. Risk Warning and Disclaimer The market carries risks, and investment requires caution. 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