Legend Biotech Brand Guidelines: The GenScript-Born CAR-T Maker Behind Carvykti

A small room inside a life-science supplier.

Legend Biotech grew out of GenScript, a life-science services company founded in New Jersey in 2002 by Frank Zhang, Sally Wang and Larry Wang, according to Wikipedia, and headquartered in Nanjing, China; GenScript itself listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2015. English Wikipedia’s article on GenScript says the group set up a research and production base in Nanjing in 2004, established one subsidiary in 2013 and founded another, Legend Biotech, the following year, in 2014. Legend gives the same year, describing itself as founded then as “an early-stage cell therapy company.”

Legend tells its own origin story in modest terms. For two years, the company says, it was known internally as the “Legend Project” and worked in a room the size of a freight elevator, with the aim of creating a cell therapy for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. Its first work was on nanobodies, single-domain antibodies, and on extending their half-life with its own technologies. In 2015, the company says, its scientists turned to chimeric antigen receptor T cells aimed at a protein called BCMA, and in 2016 investigator-initiated trials began in China.

GenScript’s Wikipedia entry records that in 2017 the Chinese authorities accepted Nanjing Legend’s application to run clinical trials of its blood cancer treatment. The same year, Legend says, data from the Chinese trials were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, and that presentation led to a partnership with Janssen Biotech, a Johnson & Johnson company, to develop the therapy together. Legend listed on the Nasdaq in 2020, according to the GenScript article.

One therapy, made with a partner.

The product that came out of the Legend Project is ciltacabtagene autoleucel, or cilta-cel, sold as Carvykti. Like other autologous CAR-T therapies it is made from each patient’s own T cells. Wikipedia’s article on the drug says it was approved for medical use in the United States in February 2022 and in the European Union in May 2022, where the applicant was Janssen-Cilag International; Legend describes the European decision as a conditional marketing approval from the European Medicines Agency. The therapy is developed and sold with Janssen, and Reuters, reporting on 15 September 2026, described Carvykti as Legend’s cancer therapy for multiple myeloma “developed with Johnson & Johnson.”

Manufacturing is shared with that partner. Legend says it makes Carvykti with Johnson & Johnson at a facility in Raritan, New Jersey, and at two sites in Ghent, Belgium, which it calls Obelisc and Tech Lane, while its research and development operations sit in Somerset, New Jersey. It added a research facility in Philadelphia, which it says opened in November 2025. The company says it employs more than 1,500 people in the United States and more than 1,000 across Europe, and that Carvykti is offered at more than 140 treatment centres in the United States; its European manufacturing, it says, supports clinical trial enrolment and treatment for European patients.

Beyond Carvykti, Legend describes its pipeline as spanning autologous, allogeneic and in vivo cell therapy, and calls itself “technology agnostic,” saying it is exploring four different technologies across blood cancers and solid tumours. In October 2026 it announced that the FDA had cleared an investigational new drug application for LB2501, an investigational in vivo CAR-T candidate. Reuters reported in September 2026 that Legend was developing an experimental in vivo therapy for lymphoma which, it said, could remove the lengthy manufacturing step of conventional CAR-T. The palette on this page is our own interpretation.

How cell and gene therapy companies present themselves.

Cell and gene therapy companies sell something that is hard to picture. A treatment may be a patient’s own cells, collected, changed in a laboratory and returned as a single dose, or a gene carried into the body by a modified virus. With no tablet or pack to show, these companies build their imagery from a small, shared set of motifs.

The most common is the abstract double helix, often drawn in light against a dark ground, followed closely by glowing cells, strands and particles rendered in soft blues, violets and teals. Where the science is shown more literally, the pictures move to the laboratory: gloved hands holding cryobags and vials, technicians in gowns, and clean manufacturing suites with stainless steel and bright, even light. Manufacturing matters to the story, because many of these treatments are made one patient at a time.

The other half of the visual language is human. Because most of these therapies are aimed at rare and inherited diseases, the companies lean on portraits of patients and their families, photographed at home or outdoors rather than in clinics, and on first-person stories told in their own words. Treatment centres, patient-support programmes and the steps of the “patient journey” often get as much space on a website as the science itself.

The field also has its own calendar. Companies present data and court investors and clinicians at meetings such as the annual meeting of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT), the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting in December, where blood-disorder therapies are discussed, and the Cell & Gene Meeting on the Mesa, an industry gathering. Names in the sector can change through spin-offs, sales and rebrands, so the identity a company shows at one meeting may not be the one it uses a few years later.

From a Nanjing project to a New Jersey headquarters.

Legend now presents itself as an American-headquartered company. Its website gives its global headquarters as Bridgewater, New Jersey, with research operations nearby in Somerset, and describes Legend as “a global, commercial-stage company.” Reuters still referred to it in September 2026 as one of GenScript Biotech’s affiliates.

Leadership changed in 2026. Reuters reported on 15 September 2026 that Legend had appointed Ingrid Zhang, a long-serving Novartis executive who had been that company’s international chief commercial officer and earlier led its China business, as chief executive with immediate effect. She succeeded Ying Huang, who, Reuters said, had resigned in July after seven years in charge. Legend told Reuters that Zhang would lead the company through its next phase, building on Carvykti and advancing its pipeline. The company has also begun to fund outside research: in October 2026 it launched an ELITE Grant Program for work on CAR-T in multiple myeloma, with applications due by 20 November 2026, and it said it would present data on Carvykti and newer cell therapies at the American Society of Hematology’s 2026 annual meeting.

For a design guide, Legend Biotech shows a company whose brand carries an origin story (the small project room) alongside a single product name it shares with a much larger partner. Compare Kite, a CAR T company inside Gilead, and Autolus, another CAR T developer. For this guide we use deep violet, aubergine ink and a lab teal with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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