KFSH&RC holds Advanced Therapies Forum in Riyadh

King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center will host the Advanced Therapies Forum in the capital Riyadh on June 23-24. The forum is a collaborative platform that brings together 30 representatives from government organizations and academic institutions and more than 30 companies. The purpose of the forum is to provide industrial partners with an opportunity to review the way they collaborate with medical institutions in research and exploration, which can help transform Saudi Arabia into a leading advanced treatment center in the region from the early development stage to licensing.

The forum aims to build bridges between academic medical institutions, industry players, funding agencies, investors, regulators and government agencies and increase the number of clinical studies in the field of T-cell therapy and gene therapy, making them accessible to Saudi patients and providing opportunities for industrial partners, including pharmaceutical companies of all sizes, to explore opportunities to conduct clinical studies at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center.

The forum included 15 keynote speeches, more than 30 presentations on projects being developed by industry leaders, 5 dialogue sessions and multiple panel discussions, aimed at developing a common vision for the future of advanced treatments in Saudi Arabia and localizing the manufacturing of cells and technologies for gene therapy, with the presence of many scientists, doctors and healthcare leaders, investors and industry partners.

Since 2020, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre has instilled hope in the hearts of patients who previously had no treatment options by treating more than 120 patients with genetically modified immune cells, a process that began with the successful treatment of the first child in the region using T cells.

Recently, the hospital successfully applied advanced gene therapy to 8 patients with inherited bleeding disorders (hemophilia), representing approximately 10 patients who participated in a gene therapy clinical study that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration because the therapy has been shown to effectively increase the levels of the missing clotting factors to a level that allows them to carry out their daily lives without preventive treatment, which has fundamentally transformed the quality of life of infected people and their families.

The forum comes at a time when gene and cell therapy are making significant progress worldwide, with more than 30 gene and gene-edited cell therapies expected to be approved for clinical use by 2024. The global cell and gene therapy market is expected to witness tremendous growth and is expected to surpass the traditional pharmaceutical market to reach more than $50 billion per year by 2027. More than 2 million patients may benefit from T-cell therapy in the next decade, and more than 1,000 clinical studies in this field are being conducted around the world.

Notably, King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre was ranked first in the Middle East and Africa and 20th in the world for the second consecutive year in the list of the top 250 academic medical institutions and the best value for health by Brand Finance in the Kingdom and the Middle East in 2024. In the same year, it was named one of the 250 best hospitals in the world by Newsweek magazine.