Contract manufacturing organizations are learning more tricks. As a Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News story reveals, CMOs are embracing strategic partnerships and adding capabilities to their arsenal of offerings to ensure long-term success.
GEN spoke with executives from CMOs--including Lonza, Sandoz and Boehringer Ingelheim, among others--to find out how contract manufacturing has changed in the last 10 years. Much like CROs, CMOs have begun to embrace strategic partnerships and build long-term relationships with drug developers, according to Kenneth Ball, senior manager at Pfizer CentreSource. As outsourcing continues to rise and competition grows, CMOs need to separate themselves from others, which means establishing new business models that go beyond a manufacturing partner, as Michael Voss, director of competitive intelligence for Boehringer Ingelheim, told GEN.
According to Denis Geffroy, vice president for business development for Almac, CMOs have consolidated over the past decade, offering more services, but in an integrated fashion. "The benefits are multiple: less time to manage CMOs, fewer audits and contracts, less travel, and above all, a faster and leaner way to conduct drug development with a much clearer communication channel."
Despite those advancements, it hasn't been easy for contract manufacturers, and it won't get better. Regulatory and cost pressures from both the FDA and local governments have increased the complexity to the typical outsourcing model, as John McGrath, senior vice president for biological ops for Lonza, explains to GEN. In turn, the competition to acquire venture capital funding will be--in his exact words, not ours--"fierce."
- read the entire GEN piece here