Contract Services
SAMPLE PREPARATION MARKETS - Automation & Application Trends Drive Growth in Sample Preparation Markets
Christi Bird indicates sample preparation remains a critical task in many research and testing workflows across biopharmaceutical, basic research, clinical, and industrial applications. While the market lacks the hype and excitement of NGS, CRISPR/Cas9, or the microRNA and epigenetics boom several years ago, the sample preparation market will always be a slow and steady gainer on an already large market size.
BIOMARKERS - FDA’s Design Control Requirements for Biomarkers in Drug Development
Kaiser J. Aziz, PhD, says the availability of validated biomarker-drug companion products will enable the molecular diagnostics and pharmaceutical industries to develop and rely on new genomic biomarkers in order to elucidate disease pathways, stratify patient populations, and monitor safe and effective use of these products.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - AmerisourceBergen: Partnering With Orphan Product Manufacturers to Drive Commercialization Success
Amy Grogg, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Commercialization at AmerisourceBergen Specialty Group provides her perspective on the barriers orphan drug manufacturers face and the solutions available to them through strategic partnerships with distributors.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Avista Pharma Solutions: Experience, Responsiveness & Expanded Capacity Driving Growth
Patrick Walsh, CEO of Avista Pharma Solutions, talks about his company’s range of capabilities and what is driving growth in this dynamic industry.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Catalent: Increasing Efficiency & Flexibility for the Clinical Supply Chain
Wetteny Joseph, President of Clinical Supply Services at Catalent Pharma Solutions, discusses the changing nature of clinical trials and the supply of materials for studies, and how Catalent is investing in new solutions, systems, and facilities to assist the biopharmaceutical industry.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - PYRAMID: Prescription for Building Success Through Partnerships
Medhat Gorgy, President and CEO of PYRAMID Laboratories, Inc., discusses his success in building futures with his clients and more importantly, the lessons he’s learned along the way.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - ALCAMI: Delivering Solutions by Connecting at Every Level
Dr. Stephan Kutzer, CEO, President, and Chairman of Alcami, discusses his company’s business strategy, outsourcing trends, how the company meets the growing needs of customers, and why companies choose Alcami.
PHARMACOLOGY MODELS - Early Phase Pharmacodynamic Models for Respiratory Drug Candidates
Robert Lins, MD, PhD, believes classical primary respiratory endpoints are far from successful in exploratory and confirmatory studies, and new techniques being developed have most potential in early phase, exploratory, clinical trials, but there may be the opportunity to apply at least some of them in the later stages of development.
RIGHTS MANAGEMENT PROTECTION - You Have the Right to Remain Protected
Tom Johnson says on the surface, rights management protection may look like another expense and another system to maintain, and while that may be true, it is a critical security component that delivers rapid and significant return on investment.
MICROBIAL PRODUCTION - Cutting-Edge inABLE® Technology: The Key to Cost-Effective Production of a Novel Antimicrobial Peptide With Potential for the Treatment of MRSA
Ian Fotheringham, PhD, and Mathew Upton, PhD, report that Infections caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria are an ever-increasing threat to public health, creating an urgent, growing demand for the identification and development of new therapies.
DRUG DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE - Crown Bioscience: Enhancing the Drug Development Process
Jean Pierre Wery, President of Crown Bioscience, discusses the requirement for more accurate research models in oncology research, focusing on PDX models that have the ability to more adequately represent the conditions and mechanisms of immunotherapy in human patients.
MANAGEMENT INSIGHT - The Wisdom of Bees: What the Honeybee Can Teach You & Your Company About Making Better Decisions
Derek Hennecke says once we understand what happens in our brains as we weigh our options, we can extrapolate this knowledge and look with fresh eyes at how CDMOs, large pharma, and the industry make decisions.
LYOPHILIZATION - A Lyophilization Scale-Up Model: Lessons Learned & Best Practices
Enrico Corona, indicates full scalability between laboratory and production lyophilization units allows for the development or optimization of freeze-drying cycle parameters that yield significant cost savings.
SPECIAL FEATURE - Prefilled Syringes & Parenteral Contract Manufacturing: Biologics Present a New Set of Challenges
Contributor Cindy H. Dubin speaks with leading syringe developers and contract manufacturers to discuss how they are overcoming industry challenges and provides a look at some of the innovative advancements in prefilled syringe technology.
SPECIAL FEATURE - Outsourcing Formulation Development & Manufacturing: Using a Single Provider Reduces Costs & Risk
Contributor Cindy H. Dubin highlights several CDMOs that are evolving their models to become their clients’ single provider and to accommodate their more potent, challenging products.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW - Gerresheimer in the US - Fully Focused on Core Business
Roger Kurinsky, Senior Vice President of Tubular Glass Americas talks about recent strategy shifts, the importance of the US pharma market, and how Gerresheimer’s investments in the US can benefit pharma companies.
DISSOLUTION TESTING - Exploring the Link Between Particle Size & Dissolution Behavior for OINDPs
Paul Kippax, PhD; Deborah Huck-Jones, PhD; et al review current trends in dissolution testing within the context of understanding particle size, which impacts clinical studies and ultimately generic submissions.
NEXT-GENERATION SEQUENCING - NGS: Uniformity Across the Block
Andrew Birnie, PhD, explores how innovations in instruments, such as the Eco 48 real-time qPCR system (PCRmax), deliver exceptional uniformity, actively improving the reliability and productivity of the working laboratory.
PACKAGING SOLUTIONS - New Deep-Drawn Alufoil Container Solves Crucial Packaging Issues for Vital Pharmaceutical Products
Georg Buchinger and Cora Helberg show how the adoption of aluminum containers for pharmaceutical products is a natural evolution of a technology used by packaging leaders since the 1990s, and an ideal prophylactic measure for the growing needs of demanding pharma customers.
CLOUD COMPUTING - Using Quantum Molecular Design & Cloud Computing to Improve the Accuracy & Success Probability of Drug Discovery
Ed Addison and Shahar Keinan, PhD, explain how cloud computing combined with the continued influence of Moore’s Law has provided an unprecedented opportunity to apply inexpensive high-performance computing to drug discovery.
Contract Services Market Overview
Increasing patent expirations of major drugs, the growing burden of chronic diseases, and elevated global awareness of vaccines are leading to a surge in outsourcing formulation development services. Industry experts say these trends put a value on the global pharmaceutical CDMO Market at $160.12 billion in 2020, and could reach $236.61 billion by 2026, while the North American CDMO market is expected to reach $101.1 billion by 2030. As more pharma/biopharma companies opt to partner with CDMOs, much of this activity is occurring in the early phase of development with the goal of overcoming risk, along with saving time and money as a drug passes through the development pipeline.
Sectors of the CDMO market – sterile injectables, prefilled syringes, biologics APIs, and viral vectors – are expected to expand quickly, driven by an accelerating shift in the pharmaceutical market toward innovative biologic and cell and gene therapy products. Nonetheless, small molecules will continue to represent the majority of prescribed drugs for the foreseeable future and thus are the major growth driver for the CDMO market.
Who Uses Contract Services?
Experts see a strong correlation between size of a company and its likelihood to outsource. In 2017, manufacturing of 20% of newly approved drugs was outsourced by Big Pharma; this increases to 80% of all manufacturing being contracted out by small biotech/pharma. And all 15 newly approved drugs in 2017 owned by small companies were supplied by CDMOs.
Rare diseases, fast-tracked drugs, and oncology treatments now account for much of pharma’s development pipeline, so it is important that CDMOs provide specialized capabilities, technology, expertise, and experience relevant to these types of programs. For expedited pathways, it is important, too, that development partners understand the interwoven and related steps essential to progressing a program efficiently and quickly. To that end companies have invested in technology and capabilities such as hot melt extrusion, spray-dry dispersions, and lipid formulation to provide options for small-molecule development, often to address the all-too-common hurdle of poor solubility and bioavailability.
How to Work with Contract Service Providers
Getting a CDMO engaged in the development process as early as possible avoids spending time exploring the wrong solutions and coming up with suboptimal formulations that need to be corrected before manufacturing. By bringing a CDMO in earlier in the process, they can more accurately assess which technologies and approaches can work on a project.
As drug products become more complex, there is increasing customer demand for relationships with CDMOs that have core competencies in highly specialized formulation and process technology areas.
One of these specialty areas is complex molecules. Biotech companies developing novel biologics are increasing in the market, thus there is an increase in outsourcing development services to BioCDMOs. To serve the needs of this market, companies are expanding their bio capabilities to offer advanced manufacturing technologies.
Another area of expertise where pharma is relying on CDMOs is in cell and gene therapy. Industry insiders expect gene therapy manufacturing market to boom and grow at rates ranging from 15 to 20%. Benefits of partnering with a cell or gene therapy CDMO include scalability, speed to market, access to technical expertise without overhead costs, and cost efficiencies. Demand for specialized manufacturing and clinical trial support for cell and gene therapies has resulted in more than 40 companies offering these services.