These and other risks associated with international operations may materially adversely affect our ability to attain or maintain profitable operations.
We face significant competition, and our operating results will suffer if we fail to compete effectively.
The biotechnology industry is characterized by intense competition and rapid innovation. Our competitors may be able to develop other products or drugs that are able to achieve similar or better results. Our potential competitors include larger biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies with greater resources than us, academic institutions, governmental agencies, public and private research institutions and early stage or smaller companies. Many of our competitors have substantially greater financial, technical and other resources, such as larger research and development staff, experienced marketing and manufacturing organizations and well-established sales forces. Further, our competitors may have more financial resources, greater access to capital and diversified product offerings and revenue sources, which may give our competitors an advantage over us. In addition, many of these competitors are active in seeking patent protection and licensing arrangements in anticipation of collecting royalties for use of technology that they have developed. Mergers and acquisitions in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries may result in even more resources being concentrated in our competitors. Competition may increase further as a result of advances in the commercial applicability of technologies and greater availability of capital for investment in these industries. Our competitors, either alone or with collaborative partners, may succeed in developing, acquiring or licensing on an exclusive basis drug or biologic products that are more effective, safer, more easily commercialized or less costly than our product candidates or may develop proprietary technologies or secure patent protection that we may need for the development of our technologies and products. We believe the key competitive factors that will affect the development and commercial success of our product candidates are safety, potency, purity, tolerability, reliability, convenience of use, price and reimbursement.
Specifically, by genetically engineering T cell therapies, we face significant competition in the T cell immunotherapy space from many companies. For additional information regarding our competition, see “Item 1. Business – Competition” in our Annual Report on 10-K filed with the SEC on March 5, 2025. Even if we obtain regulatory approval of our product candidates, the availability and price of our competitors’ products could limit the demand and the price we are able to charge for our product candidates. We may not be able to implement our business plan if the acceptance of our product candidates is inhibited by price competition or the reluctance of physicians to switch from existing methods of treatment to our product candidates, or if physicians switch to other new drug or biologic products or choose to reserve our product candidates for use in limited circumstances. Moreover, the development and manufacturing costs associated with engineered T cell therapies may make it difficult to compete with alternative products that may be simpler and cheaper to develop and manufacture.
Our internal computer systems, or those used by our third-party CROs, our clinical sites, or other contractors or consultants, may fail or suffer cybersecurity incidents, data breaches or other unauthorized or improper access, which could result in a material disruption of the development programs of our product candidates.
Despite the implementation of security measures, our internal computer systems and those of our current and future CROs, our clinical sites, and other contractors and consultants are vulnerable, and like companies in our industry, we have experienced a variety of disruptions and data privacy and information security threats and incidents. These cyberattacks may include cybersecurity incidents, data breaches, attacks by hackers and other malicious third parties (including the deployment of computer viruses, malware, ransomware, denial-of-service attacks, social engineering fraud (including phishing attacks), and other events that affect service reliability and threaten the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information), unauthorized access, natural disasters, fires, terrorism, war, telecommunications or electrical interruptions or failures, employee error or malfeasance or other malicious or inadvertent disruptions, including inadvertent or intentional wrongful actions by insider employees and vendors. For example, the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has led to an increase in cyberattacks on the Ukraine, including its government, companies, institutions and people, as well on the financial and communications infrastructure of other countries, companies and individuals therein. Additionally, the increased usage of computers operated on home networks may make our or our partners’ systems more susceptible to cybersecurity incidents or data breaches. While we have not experienced any such material system failure, cybersecurity incident, or data breaches, if such a material event were to occur and cause interruptions in our operations, it could result in a material disruption of our development programs and our business operations. For example, the loss of data from ongoing or completed or future preclinical studies and clinical trials could result in delays in our regulatory approval efforts and significantly increase our costs to recover or reproduce the data. Likewise, similar events relating to the computer systems of our third party vendors or manufacturers could also have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.
Unauthorized disclosure of sensitive or confidential data, including personally identifiable information, whether through a cybersecurity incident, data breach, systems failure, employee negligence, fraud or misappropriation, or otherwise, or unauthorized access to or through our information systems and networks, whether by our employees or third parties, could result in negative publicity, legal liability and damage to our reputation. Unauthorized disclosure of personally identifiable information could also expose us to sanctions for violations of data privacy laws and regulations around the world.