Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Devyn Smith · Arbor Biotechnologies · August 2026
Your reachable market is not a customer base, it is a counterparty base. Two kinds of company sit in it: the ones that want an asset, and the ones that want a tool. They are found in different places, they sign for different reasons, and only one of the two shows up at a partnering conference. This is where both sit, who signs inside each group, and roughly how many there are. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Large pharmaceutical groups with genetic medicine mandates
The shortest list on this page and the one everyone works. Value here is not discovery, it is timing, because the mandate, the therapeutic area and the person who owns search and evaluation all change more often than the company does.
Who signs: head of external innovation, VP of business development and licensing, therapeutic area head, search and evaluation lead.
Roughly 30 to 45 groups worldwide
large pharmaceutical companies with a stated genetic medicine or advanced therapy mandate; a named list, not a market
Mid cap biopharma in liver, metabolic and rare disease
Where a platform gap is felt hardest, because the therapeutic area is chosen and the editing capability is not owned. Smaller deal sizes than the group above, but far more of them, and a much shorter path from first conversation to a scientific meeting.
Who signs: chief business officer, VP of corporate development, head of research, therapeutic area lead.
250 to 400
clinical and preclinical stage biopharma companies worldwide with disclosed programs in liver, metabolic or rare disease
Central nervous system developers
The area where delivery, not editing, is the constraint everybody is trying to solve, which makes a partner conversation here technical from the first minute. The people who matter are researchers with budget rather than corporate development seats.
Who signs: chief scientific officer, head of research, VP of business development, platform lead.
300 to 450
biopharma companies worldwide with disclosed central nervous system programs and staff on payroll
Cell therapy and immunology developers
A tool buyer rather than an asset buyer. They need editing capability inside their own construct and are used to licensing it rather than building it, which makes the conversation a capability fit rather than a pipeline fit.
Who signs: head of platform or technology, VP of research, chief technology officer, head of alliance management.
400 to 600
cell therapy, gene therapy and immunology developers worldwide with disclosed programs
Delivery, vector and manufacturing partners
The counterparties that make a program possible rather than buy it. Relationships here tend to start technical and become commercial, and they are the segment least likely to be reached by anything that looks like business development outreach.
Who signs: chief business officer, head of partnerships, VP of technical operations, head of licensing.
200 to 300
delivery technology, vector, lipid nanoparticle and contract manufacturing companies serving genetic medicine worldwide
Disease foundations and translational funders
Non dilutive capital attached to a named disease and a named scientific officer. Being straight about the limit: this group is not enumerated in one place anywhere public, which is exactly why it stays underworked by everyone.
Who signs: chief scientific officer, director of research programs, venture philanthropy lead, head of translational funding.
Roughly 150 to 250 of scale
disease foundations and translational funds with published research budgets; reached by name and by disease, one at a time

Where the openings are

1
Two counterparties who never sit in the same room. One wants an asset and reads pipeline. The other wants an editing capability and reads technical fit. A message written for a therapeutic area business development seat lands badly with a platform lead, and the reverse is worse. Two audiences is a different reach problem than one, and a solvable one.
2
Partnering is bought at a moment. A readout that leaves a hole, a discontinued program, a new therapeutic area mandate, a reorganized external innovation team, a search and evaluation seat that just changed hands. Those events are visible from outside if someone is watching several hundred companies for them, and invisible if you are waiting to be found.
3
The conference calendar is a queue, not a channel. It compresses a year of first conversations into a few weeks and it selects for whoever the other side already knows. The companies in the segments above that have never heard your name are not less qualified, they are simply unaware, and they are reachable by seat on a schedule you set.
4
The seats turn over faster than the companies do. Heads of external innovation, search and evaluation leads and therapeutic area heads move often, and a new one rebuilds their own map of the field in the first months. A channel built on named roles catches that window. A network built on past meetings hears about it afterwards.
Built from public market data covering companies with published pipelines, disclosed programs and registered operations across North America, Europe and Asia, counts banded deliberately. Program disclosures are self reported and preclinical work is frequently unpublished, so these figures describe the visible field rather than the whole of it. Funders and foundations are not enumerated in any single public source and are described rather than counted.
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