EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - How Resilience Is Bringing Forward Thinking to Disrupt the Biomanufacturing Landscape to Increase Access to Medicines

While many biopharmaceutical companies are built to fulfil a need, Resilience was built to serve innovation. Founded during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it was clear that there was a need to revolutionize the CDMO space with a refocus on the foundations of biomanufacturing, a reprioritization on manufacturing technology development, and a redefinition of partnership. This defined the mission of Resilience today – increasing access to complex medicines across the world.

With a sustainable network of high-tech, end-to-end manufacturing facilities supported by a team with decades of experience, Resilience is a technology-focused biomanufacturing company dedicated to providing solutions to ensure the treatments of today and tomorrow can be made quickly, safely, and at scale. Drug Development & Delivery recently interviewed Syed T. Husain, Chief Commercial Officer of Resilience, to discuss how the company became an industry-leading service provider in less than four years.

Q: Resilience was founded in 2020; tell us a little about the company’s history – where did you come from?

A: Resilience was formed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. During that time, it was clear that there was a need for a new type of biomanufacturing partner. Biomanufacturing had generally not kept up with the ability to develop the new, complex medicines of the future. Our world faced the challenge of rapidly developing new treatments for emerging threats and scaling up biomanufacturing during the pandemic. These factors were, and still are, crucial for our country’s health, economy, and national security. And that’s the reason why Resilience was founded.

We responded to two major problems – serving as a biomanufacturing powerhouse for process and analytical development, drug substance, and drug product across established (Biologics, Vaccines) to emerging (Nucleic Acids, Cell and Gene Therapy) modalities, as well as focusing on the development of next-generation manufacturing technology platforms to keep up with essential product developments and increase access to complex medicines. We also focused on how a partnership in Pharma and Biotech, and with Governments/NGOs, is actually constructed. We considered the attitudes, behaviors, and mindset of a true partner with aligned incentives versus a transactional relationship.

Our mission was not only to develop cutting-edge next-generation manufacturing technologies but also to develop business models that redefine the partnership that could be formed between the service provider and an innovator. Throughout the process, we were fortunate to receive funding and become backed by prominent VC firms ARCH Venture Partners and 8VC, along with industry veterans as our founding executive team, which have made it all possible.

Q: You’re a young company; how do you infuse operational experience and excellence in an organization that’s only existed for 3 years?

A: The founders of Resilience took a methodological and deliberate approach to building the company, with exceptional underlying fundamentals. The infrastructure featured a mix of existing CDMOs, pharma carve-outs, and green/ brownfield builds. There was a focus on ensuring that the company originated from a multitude of talents and experiences because, typically, when companies are formed, they’re kind of starting from scratch, whereas we were able to provide embedded experience from day one.

The talent brought on board purposefully comes from diverse backgrounds – pharma and biotech, CDMO, product development, manufacturing, and established and emerging modalities. Resilience took this purposeful approach with its people because our founders knew that they would be at the heart of what makes biomanufacturing possible.

The other key element the company decided upon was to invest upfront in digital, quality, and operational systems. Our leaders recognized the importance of offering platforms that serve as a foundation for an integrated operational and quality network. We ensured the rapid stand-up of our manufacturing capacity was supported by interconnected modular platform technologies. When you look at the company’s early years, it began by ensuring we had a solid foundation before we rapidly grew with customer projects.

Q: What sets Resilience apart from traditional CDMOs?

A: The acquisition of each of our manufacturing and development facilities that created what Resilience is today enabled our client’s instantaneous access to high in-demand capabilities in established and emerging modalities. With our initial mission in mind, we have upgraded digital, quality, and capacity at our sites across North America. This approach has begun to expand internationally as well.

We chose to make investing in digital a priority to maximize operational performance and customer delight. Meaning that the enhancements we’ve carefully considered for each of our biomanufacturing facilities were done with a purpose in mind – to serve our client’s needs. These three pillars point to what differentiates us in the pharma and biotech community: our end-to-end capabilities that support diverse development and manufacturing needs, innovative technologies, and a distinguished business and partnership model.

Q: How does Resilience fit into the CDMO space?

A: Resilience has built a strong reputation as a development and manufacturing service provider, which allows us to serve customers efficiently and enhance access to complex medicines. In addition, our differentiation is directly linked to the next-generation technologies we currently have in development and business models that genuinely form an aligned incentive partnership that befits our partners and, most importantly, the patients they serve. While we’re a CDMO in practice, we consider ourselves a standout partner in the industry based on our innovation, cutting-edge technologies, non-standard offerings, and unique viewpoint on how contract partnerships should function.

Q: How is Resilience revolutionizing the way medicines are made?

A: Our mission is to create a healthier world by increasing access and affordability to medicines and therapies. Our vision is to become the most trusted biomanufacturing partner through operational and quality excellence. Our strategy is to serve customers with reliable, technology-enabled, end-to-end biomanufacturing solutions for complex medicines using flexible business models unique to Resilience.

We’re changing the status quo of contract development and biomanufacturing by creating processes and platforms that allow our team to make novel therapies quickly, safely, and at scale. Collaboration is also at the heart of what we do – with leaders across different industries working together to improve the way complex medicines are made, making it possible for more patients worldwide to get the medicines they need.